Just a radio nerd strolling in. I live in Northeast PA and tuned in on the radio to hear whether or not the nationwide EAS test would be a success. I was unsurprised to see that it was, indeed, not.
About 2:00 on the dot, I heard the SAME tones and attention signal. The audio message that followed was VERY garbled. For the first three seconds, I heard the standard "This is only a test" before the man's voice was drowned out by a loud, crunching static. As the test went on, you could hear the Attention Signal and audio message looping from the start again and again amidst the heavy static. To top it all off, toward the end of the audio message...the strongest thing you could understand in all the noise was, of all things, a Big Bopper song going "BOBBA MMM BOBBA MMM MOW MOW" ostensibly relayed from some 50s format station. I wish I was able to tape it.
Scrolling around the dial to hear the tail end of other stations' tests revealed that it was the same garbled audio message that went across the area, not a fault of the first station I listened to (97.9 WBSX).
I can only assume this happened because the audio message was run through tens of thousands of EAS units around the country before finally reaching Scranton. The only thing that today's national test proved was that the EAS system, despite being designed as a national system from the get-go, only seems to work best in local settings...settings where the audio is not passing through tens of thousands of units, being degraded further and further and further.
Evidently, my area wasn't the only one to fail to get the message. Is this mere game of telephone virtually guaranteed to fail in the event of an actual national emergency? Is this a design flaw that was overlooked for fourteen years? If so, shouldn't we consider using the telephone network as a backup instead and relaying national emergency messages via microwave or satellite instead?
About 2:00 on the dot, I heard the SAME tones and attention signal. The audio message that followed was VERY garbled. For the first three seconds, I heard the standard "This is only a test" before the man's voice was drowned out by a loud, crunching static. As the test went on, you could hear the Attention Signal and audio message looping from the start again and again amidst the heavy static. To top it all off, toward the end of the audio message...the strongest thing you could understand in all the noise was, of all things, a Big Bopper song going "BOBBA MMM BOBBA MMM MOW MOW" ostensibly relayed from some 50s format station. I wish I was able to tape it.
Scrolling around the dial to hear the tail end of other stations' tests revealed that it was the same garbled audio message that went across the area, not a fault of the first station I listened to (97.9 WBSX).
I can only assume this happened because the audio message was run through tens of thousands of EAS units around the country before finally reaching Scranton. The only thing that today's national test proved was that the EAS system, despite being designed as a national system from the get-go, only seems to work best in local settings...settings where the audio is not passing through tens of thousands of units, being degraded further and further and further.
Evidently, my area wasn't the only one to fail to get the message. Is this mere game of telephone virtually guaranteed to fail in the event of an actual national emergency? Is this a design flaw that was overlooked for fourteen years? If so, shouldn't we consider using the telephone network as a backup instead and relaying national emergency messages via microwave or satellite instead?
