The BBC World Service aired a story in the US with EAS tones and alert in it 5 times on Wednesday. ....why oh why would any broadcaster/programmer whos content airs in the US use this?
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BBC World Service Airs EAS Tones
- Thread starter SomeRadioGuy
- Start date
Was the story about AM radios in cars and the belief that people "rely on them in emergencies"?
Doubtless when the FCC come knocking, the "defense" will be "it wasn't our programming, we were just relaying the BBC". Your license, your responsibility, and if you pad out your airtime with filler from an overseas broadcaster, you run the risk.
Another website posts that the EAS tones were for a Tornado Warning....???!!
My question....WHO, exactly, SENT this message??
AFAIK, this would NOT have been something generated by the BBC......
Did someone actually send out a FAKE message----- ????!
Maybe Scott F. was correct re: "rogue" EAS endecs.....!!!!
My question....WHO, exactly, SENT this message??
AFAIK, this would NOT have been something generated by the BBC......
Did someone actually send out a FAKE message----- ????!
Maybe Scott F. was correct re: "rogue" EAS endecs.....!!!!
Unless it was part of a World Service program about American radio, American emergency preparedness, American weather? And the BBC had recorded it in the US? Otherwise, the hack theory makes (scary) sense.
Nothing was hacked.
It was apparently a BBC news feature having something to do with tornadoes in the Midwest. Probably a reporter who didn't know any better (likely not from the US) getting some "nat sound" of a warning going off on the radio and thinking (not wrongly) that it would make an interesting bit of scene-setting audio.
Most public radio news stations in the US carry BBC WS overnight, and for good reason - it's relatively inexpensive and provides live coverage if something breaks somewhere in the world before 5 AM when Morning Edition comes on.
As long as the proper procedure is followed - a notification letter to the FCC - it's unlikely there will be any further consequences. The BBC will no doubt remind its US journalists that you don't put EAS audio on the radio, ever, and life will move on.
It was apparently a BBC news feature having something to do with tornadoes in the Midwest. Probably a reporter who didn't know any better (likely not from the US) getting some "nat sound" of a warning going off on the radio and thinking (not wrongly) that it would make an interesting bit of scene-setting audio.
Most public radio news stations in the US carry BBC WS overnight, and for good reason - it's relatively inexpensive and provides live coverage if something breaks somewhere in the world before 5 AM when Morning Edition comes on.
As long as the proper procedure is followed - a notification letter to the FCC - it's unlikely there will be any further consequences. The BBC will no doubt remind its US journalists that you don't put EAS audio on the radio, ever, and life will move on.
In fact, the "average American" (don't ask me to define that...) hears EAS tones with startling frequency as part of "this station is conducting a test of the..." procedures at every FCC licensed station.
Even the most obtuse person knows from context whether such tones are "just a test" or something real. Even if the "letter of the law" is rather precise, the intent is to prevent using those tones in entertainment programming or, in an extreme, in situations where a fumbled play in a football game disappoints the crowd.
This event will likely result in some additional text being added to the style manual of the Beeb for US or North American services. There may be an exchange of official letters betwen the BBC and the FCC and the friends across the waters will be at peace once more.
For much of Summer 2021, I'd get frequent EAS alerts on OTA TV (I'd just moved and hadn't gotten cable set up yet) about the Dixie and Caldor fires, which were... about 150+ miles away (this was likely because the stations I was receiving are broadcast from Sacramento, which includes those areas as part of its TV market).
And, more recently, I was woken up at one point early in the morning about a week ago by what sounded like an EAS test.
I guess it's better than what an EBS or CONELRAD test would've been like (both were defunct long before I was born, so I don't know what those were like), but it is annoying.
c
There were only four or five national CONELRAD tests from the mid-50's to the very early 60's. They were national half hour tests, and either your AM was part of it or you signed off for the 30 minute space.
The tests were brief explanations and most of the effort went to testing the system, not the message, as it required a lot of stations trying to run tuned transmitters on other frequencies at very low power.
A couple of regional tests were done, where everybody in a metro area participated. I only heard one of those, for Kalamazoo, MI.
While a transmitter can be digitally tuned, on AM (CONELRAD was not allowed/deployed on FM), towers are not frequency agile and to accept a totally different frequency need a separate ATU (Antenna Tuning Unit) for the additional frequency. When you look at how many AMs today are diplexed (or more) adding an additional tuning unit is a huge, major cost and is not easily done.
There are broadband antennas on FM... just look at the ESB systems. But no such multiplex system exists for AM.
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