Mobile radio dropped the ball - AGAIN

[tomservo]

Mobile radio was nowhere to be found when it came to tonight's tornado emergency. Even after a confirmed tornado touched down in one of Mobile's most populated areas, none of the stations could be bothered to break away from their programming. It wasn't until well into the warning that Cumulus finally switched all their stations to airing Local 15 TV's audio, but by then the tornado was long gone and all that was left was assessing the damage.

To make matters worse, the EAS alerts that passed through the audio from NOAA weather radio were awful. Clear Channel's was audible but delayed by what seemed like a minute or two compared to Cumulus, and Cumulus' audio was almost unintelligible at times because they had such a weak signal from NOAA it was static-laden.

Tell me again why anyone here or anywhere else should trust local radio to tell them ANYTHING in a timely fashion? It was an embarrassment. Yes, I realize this is a holiday and everyone's gone home for the week but this storm system was being hyped two or three days ago, plenty of time for SOMEONE SOMEWHERE to put in a contingency plan.

No, that would make too much damned sense. Gotta play Jingle Bell Rock for the umpteenth time, gotta put on Delilah or whatever, gotta air those ads.

Thank God for the internet, right? I got timely text updates from both the NWS Mobile, some of the local stations and even James Spann from ABC 33/40 in Birmingham… I got live streaming video from WKRG's website… but I couldn't get a god forsaken weather report on my car radio to save my life.

This is it. I am done. Between the poor sound quality and processing, the narrow playlists, the faux local voicetracked DJs, the lack of local weather & news and the 6 minute commercial blocks, I am DONE with local radio. Screw it. They can continue to play to the lowest common denominator and rot in hell for all I care.

 

[stereolane]

Very interesting, and I agree...

However, in many other threads, you, and your contemporaries seem to sing the praises of more and more new CCM repeater drone stations. I guess if you're Cumulus or Clear Channel, unmanned operations, and no local programming is bad...but if it's Way-FM, or K-Love, hey, it's all good, right?

???

 

[tomservo]

First of all I don't care for CCM or other Christian teaching/preaching outlets because I am not a religious person. Second of all, they come in as out of state network operators so at least we know what we're getting ahead of time. If I've been positive towards those stations in this state it's because I'm happy any time a station debuts and fills a format hole in an area or market, even if that format is not something I'll ever want or need to hear.

Commercial music and talk radio at least gives the illusion of SOME local hosts and content yet no one was anywhere to be found. You're telling me I'm expecting too much from a company with dozens of local employees that NO ONE thought to run in and take calls from affected areas, or pass along closed streets info, or just be a local voice urging calm? That's B.S.

If you want to argue that ever CCM repeater in Alabama should be manned 24/7 by a staff of trained broadcasters, I'm all for that because I'd be for that at every station that is supposedly operating in the public's interest.

 

[R.D.P.]

I feel your pain Mr. Zach.

Shame on those that didn't carry this life saving information.

This includes those from the Selma/Montgomery area.

Phooey to them all!

R.D.P. <><

 

[Dr voicetrack]

I can understand the frustration, Zach. But blaming local radio for everything in your rant is silly. True, most stations were not there. But looking through facebook pages, it appears WABD and TK101 were on top of things by people's comments, station postings, etc.

Don't blame stations for EAS transmissions from NWS. They can only turnaround and rebroadcast as quick as equipment allows. Not the station's fault. The whole EAS system has always had it's issues.

How quick do you think radio can turn around and get info on the air? By your rant, you expect them to have real time info. Impossible. It has to get sent out by NWS, trickle down the pipeline, then it can be re-broadcasted. Did you expect radio to play meteorologist and predict the tornado was going to touch down? Not their job. Between the speed of the storm and the time it takes for info to be relayed, of course the storm was going to be halfway across the city by the time radio could do anything.

Not to say the public didn't have a heads up. I did hear a couple radio reports about the storm before it touched down. If you missed it, it's probably because you were too busy punching around continuously. When you do that, you increase the chances of missing everything.

To sum up, you do have SOME grievance. But not to where you want to take it.

 

[tomservo]

What I couldn't figure out, Dr Voicetrack, was how Clear Channel's EAS broadcasts were so delayed versus Cumulus. Cumulus runs HD on their stations and last time I checked, CC's were all off except for KSJ. So the delay wouldn't have been from HD. I thought the EAS tripped as soon as the warning tones came through from the control station and listening stations would either trip into the alert or miss it entirely. It was a technical curiosity to me, as I don't fully understand how the system is implemented.

As for social media, kudos to them for at least doing that, but it doesn't do those of us driving around any good unless we're checking Facebook while driving a car. Which I hope no one does! Anyway if I've got access to social media, a radio station is not my first choice for information. NWS Mobile's Twitter posts and local TV seem to do a great job in that arena. The one place radio has the advantage (on the go) is where they utterly failed to react.

At a bare minimum some of the stations should have at least been able to pop over to their TV weather partners for audio coverage as soon as the TV coverage went live, if not having someone there working the board and taking calls directly. It would have been nice for at least a few stations to break from holiday programming to tell people where not to drive and all that afterwards. Maybe Cumulus stuck with Local 15 after the warnings, but after getting home I didn't turn the radio back on because it would only have made me more mad.

Granted, both tornadoes this month that hit Mobile were relatively small, but to the people affected in midtown I'm sure this was a major disaster to them, and without power or any kind of portable TV they were basically without any source of information other than smart phones in the immediate aftermath.

I'm not saying that every station should have dropped programming for days like the Birmingham stations did after the April 2011 tornado that destroyed Tuscaloosa (and my hometown of Pleasant Grove in Jefferson County) but a little "comfort and information" from a live body on air would have been nice.

If we're entering the era of "why should radio bother?" then why don't we go ahead and convert these stations into national brands so at least we won't have to wonder whether someone will be there for local news and information any more?

 

[Dr voicetrack]

I understand what you're saying. When it comes to radio joining tv coverage at the drop of a warning, here's my issue.....TV is notorious for going wall-to-wall at the drop of any warning. Most of the time, it's a slim threat but TV will try and hype the heck out of it to keep people glued. Problem for radio with that is that most of the time, the tv person is terrible at adjusting. So what's being presented doesn't translate well to radio. Lots of redundant info, lots of long gaps between verbage. On the radio side, that results in tune out. It's a damned if you do/ if you don't situation. You can't predict when/what tornadoes will do. Only react. In this case, the stations that did react, did so asap for the most part, IMHO.

As far as your EAS concerns....It really depends on the equipment. Not the operator. Depending on the EAS receiver, there's an amount of turnaround time. Receiver gets incoming audio, then re-sends. Some receivers will gather all audio before relaying alert. Others will relay as audio is still coming in. With the amount of warnings that were being generated, it would be difficult for some receivers to keep up. I've seen that happen many times over the years.

 

[stereolane]

One obvious, no-brainer answer to the severe weather coverage issue is fairly simple. Whenever there is any threat of severe weather (watch issued) you have an on-air person at the station. In the case of the N/T station where i worked, this was a strict policy, and the person was usually a part-time news anchor. This person did a live newscast, usually during times when only network news was aired, with the threat of severe weather being the main focus. And before any of you "bean counters" chime in, sales liked this policy as well, because the "Storm Center" was SPONSORED.

 

[R.D.P.]

In my case, WALX/WJAM was the only one actually doing the coverage. They had the live feed from WAKA Channel 8 broadcasting the events.

Fuzion 100.1 or Train Wreck 100.1 as I call it now, was playing their usual mix of music with no peep of information.

Their sister station WHBB was too busy getting their Praise on.  The announcer didn't bother to interrupt the music to share this life saving information. Not knocking the Praise thing but when bad weather hits, it doesn't hurt to keep your listeners informed.  You may be helping to save their lives from the impending danger that's occurring.

(I must say that WDXX and WHBB were the tops when it came to doing severe weather coverage.  Now that Fuzion has taken over, they've seem to lost their touch big time.)

Not too sure about WQLS in Camden but I'm almost certain they didn't do any coverage at all.  This station has yet to do a weather report of any kind.

WBFZ was too busy getting their blues thing on.  They have never done many weather reports since they signed on in 2001.

I concur with Mr. Zach again.  The radio is supposed to do more than entertain us.  When bad weather hits, they should make an attempt to keep their listeners informed.  Some people may have been traveling while the storms were occurring and in that case, it may have been their only access to this life saving information.

I still say Kudos to those that kept their listeners informed during this severe weather outbreak.  Those that didn't, I still say phooey to you. 

R.D.P. <><

 

[thegulfcoast]

I'm not at all a fan of any of the CCL stations in Mobile but, in their defense, they did have a human being there on Christmas day. Around 4:45 pm, I was sitting in the living room with the new radio that my family gave me for Christmas and either 96.1 or 94.9 did have someone go on the air and tell everyone to watch out for the tornado at exit 15 on I-10. He mentioned that it had been spotted and one tornado had already touched down in Midtown. Mind you that the poor fellow was obviously not the most experienced of their crew since he had just a little bit of trouble getting locations totally correct but at least he was there for 15 minutes. He said something like, "If I can find the right location here. I have papers everywhere from all of the tornados that have been spotted in the Mobile area." They didn't take any calls and I guess they went back to music after but at least he was there live.

 

[stereolane]

What was 710 WNTM doing during the tornado? It looks to me like the website hasn't been updated since the start of the hurricane season.

 

[whit979]

Seeing reports of an entire radio market going AWOL during severe weather makes me so, so discouraged about the future of radio.

When I was a program director in Oxford, I took the time, without anyone asking me, to learn how to simply report weather on the radio. I am not a broadcast meteorologist, but it is not that hard to look at a radar and figure out that green means rain, yellow means more rain and red means something bad. The National Weather Service in its wisdom has even refined the warning system so that if you look at a polygon, it will tell you simply by its shape what direction a storm is moving in and the locales it will affect. This is NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. Heck, the weather service even has free webinars to teach laypeople how to spot severe weather. Not only that, if you call up your local weather service office they'll give your station free access to the same chat service the TV meteorologists use!

Seriously, Alabama radio, how many lives are going to be put at stake before you all wake up and come up with severe weather contingency plans? Sit down DJ Schmuck in front of a radar, run him through a crash course on telling people that "the text of the warning says it will affect Mobile," and tell him that if he wants to work there then he'll be on-call when a tornado watch is issued. Christmas and weekends and overnights are not an excuse to have no plan in place. If you can afford power to spin the hits on a holiday then you can afford to put a warm body in the studio to fulfill your duty to the public. And, as was already noted, if your sales department can't sell continuous severe weather coverage (we were sponsored by our local ServiceMaster cleaners) then your sales department isn't trying.

 

[Wilma Fingerdoo]

TK101 was live with the Christmas twister and weather all afternoon.

 

[rtech]

What I couldn't figure out, Dr Voicetrack, was how Clear Channel's EAS broadcasts were so delayed versus Cumulus. Cumulus runs HD on their stations and last time I checked, CC's were all off except for KSJ. So the delay wouldn't have been from HD. I thought the EAS tripped as soon as the warning tones came through from the control station and listening stations would either trip into the alert or miss it entirely. It was a technical curiosity to me, as I don't fully understand how the system is implemented.

The EAS equipment used by all broadcasters can be operated in three modes: Automatic Relay (where it passes on the alerts within seconds). Timed Relay (The message will be held for a predetermined time. This allows for the alert to be broadcast in a natural break instead of interrupting the programming). Ignore (This where the alert is just logged).

Each event can be preset to one of the above actions. Obviously, one of the stations you were monitoring had their Tornado Warning filter set to Timed Relay instead of Automatic Relay.

 

[Alabama Florida Radio]

Unfortunatly this is the way Coporate Owned Radio has gotten over the years which is sad, I live in Walton County Florida and I visited family in Alabama on Christmas Day on the way home all I could find was one Station out of Dothan that was live doing weather Coverage which was woof-fm and that was it, In walton county I can pick up stations in out of PC, Destin, FT. Walton , Dothan & Pensacola. The FCC tellls broadcasters to serve the community but rarely enforces it and checks up on them anymore letting Corporations like Clear Channel, Cumulus, Cox get away with not doing it.
From what I understand Dothan has 8 owned by Clay Holladay out of Missippi and woof is locally owned and PC has Clear Channel along with Mobile & Pensacola. It seems these coporate owners could careless about serving the community because the are allowed to do this.

 

[KEVIN Country]

I didn’t get to listen a whole lot, so I can’t speak fairly for everyone, but I did specifically notice WABD was doing a fantastic job that afternoon. The jock was live and local and was getting good info out to the public and obviously knew what he was talking about. It sounded like real radio. Just quickly scanning up and down the dial, I heard a lot of music, so I can only hope they were talking about it between songs. But I did hear a few other stations broadcasting TV station audio, which these days, is good in and of itself. There are a few stations out there still doing it right. I just wish everyone would do it right when it comes to Tornados.

-On a day (or night, or overnight) when tornados are expected, talk and talk often about the pending threat.
-EAS will probably have to do the initial warning since tornados happen so fast, but jump on the mic or pot up the TV station IMMEDIATELY and start talking about it. And repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat that there is a tornado or possible tornado on the ground at such and such place
-After the storm, talk about road closures, power outages and even take calls from your listeners

This type of mentality should even apply to tornados in rural areas. Just because it’s striking “way out in the sticks” doesn’t mean real people aren’t being effected.

Yes, this will mean breaking away from formatics for a while, but IMO, you will gain listeners because they will now TRUST your station will be the one to tune to in the next emergency.

Regarding EAS…ALL tornado warnings should be Automatic Relay if you ask me. Cut into music, cut into spots, cut into whatever…Just get the info on NOW. Seconds literally count. Also, EAS should ONLY be used for Tornado Warnings, Flash Flood Warnings and National and Local Emergencies... It shouldn’t even go off for Severe Thunderstorm Warnings, IMO. (Have a live jock that knows what he/she is talking about when weather is bad to TALK about severe weather in the area between songs.) EAS should NEVER be used for watches as I've heard it used before. That way, when the EAS tones go off, the listener knows something bad is going on and will stop and listen. I still get chills when I think about hearing the old EBS tone, and that’s the way it should be with today’s EAS. These days, I hear EAS going off for nearly everything, and it should not be that way. I also think the old “This is only a test…” message should be aired before the RWT. It may just be me, but I feel that thing squawks so much, the listener just gets used to it and ignores it.

 

[tomservo]

What was 710 WNTM doing during the tornado? It looks to me like the website hasn't been updated since the start of the hurricane season.

I wasn't able to check WNTM because it was late afternoon and they were already buried in the noise from my position near Fort Morgan. I didn't have my HD radio with me because CC had, at least check, dropped WNTM from Rocket's HD-2 so that killed any chance I have of hearing them reliably. (HD is also off on 99.9 too, but on again for KSJ and TK.)

It would be shocking, though, if they had someone there to break in and do live stuff. I was disappointed that no one at FM Talk 106.5 was there early on (I was too out of range of their low power broadcasts to check later after the storms passed.)

TK101 was live with the Christmas twister and weather all afternoon.

That's news to me. TK is one of my presets but I don't recall hearing anything but commercials and/or music when I spot checked them a few times. Odd that the Pensacola-licensed CC station would be the one breaking in, ha ha. Either TK or Rocket was playing Ozzy's "Crazy Train" right around the time the tornado touched down, which, looking back, sure makes me cringe.

I didn’t get to listen a whole lot, so I can’t speak fairly for everyone, but I did specifically notice WABD was doing a fantastic job that afternoon. The jock was live and local and was getting good info out to the public and obviously knew what he was talking about. It sounded like real radio.

I'm glad to hear this. TK and WABD at least talking about the weather (even if I didn't hear it) means they're not as bad as I was thinking in my initial rant. It still sizzles my bacon though that in 15-20 minutes of flipping I managed to miss any and all updates. But I heard Christmas Music, Kesha, Ozzy and the like. D'oh.

(And a bit of theory — would WHIL have had someone there to break in if they were still run by Spring Hill College?)

 

[TheDingo]

seems like every time I go down to that area I hear at least one EAS alert or test, meanwhile I can scan the dial up here in the Huntsville area during a tornado warning and usually not hear it on any station, and maybe one or two that actually stop music and go solid coverage whether its TV audio or live in studio, usually WDRM WRSA or WAHR

 

[rubberchicken]

Afternoon jock Scott Adams was the guy heard on WABD on Christmas. Had seen him post on facebook that he was in the studio for the day because of potential bad weather. The right call was made there. Whether it was Cumulus or Scott himself who decided to take that action, kudos!