National EAS Test Scheduled for 11/9

[FightingIrish]

Well, it just played. Heard it on radio. Flipped around a few stations (including a translator of a local small commercial AM outlet). They were all synced.

 

[Kenny Atkinson]

Well, it just played. Heard it on radio. Flipped around a few stations (including a translator of a local small commercial AM outlet). They were all synced.

Here in Rhode Island The Cumulous radio stations were in sync.WWLI-FM is the flagship.along with sister wprv.WJAR TV and Cox cable tripped with the tone. But aduio was horrible.A mess in my opinion

 

[jal41]

Anniston, Alabama (where I moved to last week)...complete fail! No radio or TV station, nor the CableOne system broadcast it.

 

[BDBopper]

Charter analog Cable in Gwinnett County, Georgia was a disaster. I started flipping channels at around 1:59 saw a lot of Test slides then the test started. Got the audio tones but no message at all. In fact it was tried twice. Almost all the stations after the test reverted to C-SPAN for 15 minutes afterward...except for a few that were complete static. Now everything back to normal.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I did not hear it, but people have described it to me as an Epic Fail.
Everything from no alert to alert but no audio to audio so garbled and static ridden it could not be understood.

"If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been standing there scratching your head,
wondering what the village idiots who run the Federal Government were trying to tell you".

 

[Kenny Atkinson]

I did not hear it, but people have described it to me as an Epic Fail.
Everything from no alert to alert but no audio to audio so garbled and static ridden it could not be understood.

"If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been standing there scratching your head,
wondering what the village idiots who run the Federal Government were trying to tell you".

It sounded like it was comming from an AM radio station.WHY? In the digital world why would'nt it be in digital?

 

[Iowan]

Not on all stations

In the Quad Cities, this 'test' was on most stations. However, the exceptions are KLJB, KGCW, and This Quad Cities. Are there any other stations who did NOT participate?

 

[nathannah]

Was at work when it happened, but I had some DVR and audio recordings for the Milwaukee channels; I can only describe it as a cacophony. Charter Wisconsin activated it the moment NOAA kicked it in just after 1pm, no problems there and it kicked right back to the channel after a minute, just as designed (though they seem to test EAS waaaay more than once a week as required, so I expected them to pass).

However, in the station cases, it was as far as six minutes late on WISN/ABC. WTMJ/NBC (which is our market's originating primary for EAS) said 'programming would be interrupted for a minute'; the EAS audio was muted as Days of Our Lives's video and audio barreled right through the tinny audio and their pathetically tiny ticker was the only sign something was amiss. WCGV/MyNet also was botched as the audio was barreled over Jeremy Kyle's audio and WCGV's own EAS encoder kicking in and blocking the national message, with video of an EAS slide kicking in after a minute.

WMVS/WMVT/PBS seemed to be the only one to get it right in the market; audio and ticker kicked in live, test happened, back to regular programming after the last squeal (going by the weather subchannel 10.4).

Radio side for Sheboygan, Milwaukee and Chicago seemed to depend on origination point. WTMJ and WGN as originating primaries had no problems (though on air WGN was noting that their TV station was taking forever to get the test; it took three minutes for them to be interrupted). WHBL Sheboygan and their sister operations were delayed by a minute, while a music station in Cleveland north of Sheboygan (WLKN) took two minutes. Wisconsin Public Radio/WSHS (at that time of day controlled by their owners, the Sheboygan Area School District) was off by only thirty seconds.

Finally, the audio quality of the test was atrocious, worse than weather radio (my absolute tolerance limit) on all stations.

 

[Joe_Capitano]

It sounded like it was comming from an AM radio station.WHY? In the digital world why would'nt it be in digital?

It is digital - closer in quality to cell phones than AM radio, but it's digital.

 

[BlueWanderer]

Was at work when it happened, but I had some DVR and audio recordings for the Milwaukee channels; I can only describe it as a cacophony. Charter Wisconsin activated it the moment NOAA kicked it in just after 1pm, no problems there and it kicked right back to the channel after a minute, just as designed (though they seem to test EAS waaaay more than once a week as required, so I expected them to pass).

Charter in my area is the same way with their tests. When they perform either "weekly" or "monthly" tests half the channels shift to the local PBS while the other half shows the alert. Happens every single time I encounter these test alerts.

 

[visaman]

I wonder what would qualify as a national emergency? I mean 9-11 came close. Even Pearl Harbor was localized and at best would've only been a threat to the West coast states.

We know now that both 9-11 and Pearl Harbor were not national-scope attacks (although both were acts of war) but at the time it wasn't known.

The EAS is supposed to be used ( I assume) when all other forms of communication are knocked out, such as by a nuclear attack. Iran could be nuclear capable within two years.

 

[visaman]

It sounded like it was comming from an AM radio station.WHY? In the digital world why would'nt it be in digital?

That was the purpose of the test, to show how antiquated the system is, and to show up the government. "See, the system failed, we need more money!" :

 

[azumanga]

The EAS is supposed to be used ( I assume) when all other forms of communication are knocked out, such as by a nuclear attack.

Of course, if radio and television are knocked out, what good is the EAS when the infrastructure is out of order.

However, during the 1970s, there was a plan to develop a radio network and receivers in the event the traditional broadcast infrastructure was knocked out -- only one radio station was built:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WGU-20

 

[vchimpanzee]

Well, it just played. Heard it on radio. Flipped around a few stations (including a translator of a local small commercial AM outlet). They were all synced.

I forgot to watch or listen!

I thought about TiVo, but it was suggested here that TiVo wouldn't record it. although I could have set it to manually record whatever was on and that would have worked. But by TiVo is being very irritable lately. Every time I add something or extend the life of a recording I don't have time to watch I get a list of what will be deleted early, and shows are yellow as soon as they finish recording.

With VHS I might have gotten it but then I would have had to put back what was on the list. Wait--I could have recorded off an antenna! But then would the signal have been working?

All these solutions I thought of after the fact. But it must be online somewhere, right?