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annoying automated weather alerts on channel 2

S

secondchoice

Thankfully we have not had a lot of severe weather lately. The last go around I was watching Channel 2 on the air. Glen Burns and company were doing a good job of tracking a storm when the automated voice came on and gave warnings for severe thunderstorms. I happened to be in the path of a radar indicated tornado and could not hear Glen Burns. This was not an EAS "capture" it ended with the female automated voice reminding us to stay tuned to WSB TV. How stupid. Why would Cox allow an in house robot kill the excellent weather staff's possible life saving information. Meanwhile channel 2.2 and 2.3 had no mention of the storms. I would think Channel 2 would have some kind of "Manual Control" to keep automated equipment from taking over weather coverage.
 
The rules must have changed. The last time I was in TV, as I understood it, you could forgo forwarding EAS alerts, IF, you had an in-house news department (which includes weather).
That was a while ago.
And I was under the impression that the stations that did forward them, did so under manual control, so as not to interrupt an on-air $pot.
Of course, most stations have totally automated master controls these days, so all that may have changed.
 
It's been a while since I saw the documentation on EAS stuff, but I recall that WSB is designated as a hub station that other stations monitor for emergency signals.

What happened here MAY have been a pass-through signal meant for those doing the monitoring. I am not sure WSB has the authority to override or decline these alerts even if Burns is doing his thing.

The flip side of these alerts is that a lot of local government agencies go power mad and abuse the system for every stupid alert you can imagine. Mostly this happens on cable where they exert franchise authority.

But in yet another flip, for YEARS, WSB used to ruin CNN Headline News by taking over the cable channel for the :25 and :55 segments. If you were a Prime Cable/GCTV/MediaOne subscriber, there was no escaping this intrusion. So I don't feel too bad if WSB is being stomped on by something these days. Call it payback.
 
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