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Saving AM Radio
- Thread starter BruceB
- Start date
EAS activation:
Maybe some journalists could write a general purpose script for EAS - a fill in the blanks type of Who, What, Where, Why, When for local and regional emergencies.
Not that much needs to be told to the public, just the 5 Ws and what sort of emergency actions people should take, then non-journalists could effectively communicate the useful emergency info as simply as possible.
Kirk Bayne
Maybe some journalists could write a general purpose script for EAS - a fill in the blanks type of Who, What, Where, Why, When for local and regional emergencies.
Not that much needs to be told to the public, just the 5 Ws and what sort of emergency actions people should take, then non-journalists could effectively communicate the useful emergency info as simply as possible.
Kirk Bayne
I went to college, but only a fair one: Arizona State. I was on the Dean's List of two different "colleges" and was, mostly,, bored to death. But the discipline of having to learn boring subjects like accounting helped me in the long run.
But, by comparison, I studied math and electronics up to the calculus and design levels via home study. I was able to build transmitters from scratch, maintained a dozen AM and FM stations and built every one from scratch. I found the correspondence courses enormously fun and I could go at my own rate, doubling back if I realized i had not grasped a concept.
In the meantime, I read everything from Gabriel García Márquez to Kafka to Hemmingway and Cervantes. I did not, however, need college professors to tell me what to think.
As to people in radio who are negative towards certain aspects of higher education, I believe most of that attitude comes from dealing over and over with "college communications grads" who came out thinking all kinds of impractical, impossible or just silly things. Personally, I find that most, over the years, had to be reeducated in the real world and diffused of the mistaken college professor ideas of how to run a radio station.
Such a template already exists. Why would it be written by a journalist?
And honestly, that's fine if someone doesn't pursue higher education. Just don't denigrate people who paid a lot of money and spent years working hard to get that additional education and accreditations. It would be like me claiming someone who graduated from high school or trade school is an ignorant knuckle dragger. Either would be an ignorant opinion.
Remember, the EAS is not activated by radio stations and radio station staff. There is a hierarchy of government "authorities" who can activate the system and present information.
You try to educated government autocrats into how to speak clearly; I would not even like to try. Alligator wrestling seems far more likely to have a successful outcome for this septuagenarian.
The only "template" is a set of instructions on activation. After that, the appropriate or designated authority will give information and instructions in their own words and style.
I didn't know that, I was thinking it would be best if the EAS script was informative and concise, hence written by journalists (rambling on in an EAS alert seems like it would only hurt the ability of listeners to figure out what was going on and what to do about it).
Kirk Bayne
The copy, as I recall goes something like "If this was an actual emergency, you would be told where to tune for information in your area."
I have always admired the "old" British system where, at a point in our equivalent of High School, students are encouraged to make a decision on college or professional training. The result was a lot of people who could be skilled workers getting a profitable and high-skilled education while not "cluttering up" the university system with people who were not in the "right place".
And many times the emergency doesn't fit a template. As I mentioned prior, the fires in Hawaii are a good example. EMS services get thrown a curve ball and need to react accordingly. They don't have time to create a script specifically for radio use.
And we have to remember that events like 9/11 and the 1994 LA earthquake did not result in an EAS activation. And that is because, after the effect of such an incident, there is nothing more people can be told that requires all media to be activated.
That is actually a simple and practical suggestion.
But how would the phone distinguish from isolation (a camper in a forest where there is no signal) or an actual emergency.
The biggest issue here is that FM needs an exterior antenna or a significantly larger internal antenna. Apple eliminated the earphone jack, making such an antenna (using the earphone cable) impossible. We don't have any other way of "getting" FM, so this has nothing to do with "big and powerful". It is more an issue of technology and logistics.
Anyone who has not read Scott's post in full should scan back and do so.
Most stations today are nightly specialized. "Jack plays whatever he wants" but Jack is not a journalist or a government official in charge of an emergency situation. So part of the purpose of EAS is to insert accurate and expert information into every communications source directly, overtaking whatever song or barstool chat or "morning zoo" routine was on the air.
This is a case (with Scott's citation of the Florida system) that requires government to create a system and infrastructure that operates constantly in readiness for local or state alerts if and when a critical even occurs. You can not expect the barely-surviving 1kw AM in Live Oak, FL, to ever be able to give sound, actionable and authoritative information. But you can expect government to do one of the things we depend on "the common good" to dictate a need for a well financed system.
It would even seem that such a system should intervene, either with audio or text, on streams, podcasts and the like; again this is "the common good" even if someone will be annoyed because their TikTok session is interrupted.
I agree with the anecdotal note from the original poster about the running car... formal education does not generate common sense in many cases.
But, as I said, there are scientific and technical fields that require formal educations. I don't want a self-educated MD treating my bad back; this is not a fake TV show.
Most people don't have the discipline to learn deep and complicated subjects and need guided and structured systems to make it to the final destination.
But I'd like to add one observation: there are people with different learning mechanisms who don't prosper in classrooms. I am one of those, as I have both light dyslexia and a low level of autism. I can self-learn much better than I can in a classroom; I got through college by buying the textbooks months ahead of each class and reading them.
Did I benefit from the classrooms? Only when the teacher allowed discussions where students could Q&A with them and each other about the interpretation of the subject. The worst were lecture based classes where there was no dialogue and you were expected to believe what the professor "professed" without alternate or alternative perspectives.
Yes, that is the template or simply, a script, for the EAS test. But it is not a script or outline for the actual event that might occur.
That's fine for your situation David. But to make fun or denigrate someone who goes to college as a whole because their one unique example of a momentary lapse of common sense, is an example of what's wrong with our society these days; too much labeling and denigrating people who might not be like them. And, no coincidence, his example of a college education being useless was a woman
I've not had an occasion to use that.
Me neither. There is no required script for stations running a weekly test. The national test comes with a script down the line explaining what the test is all about, but that's about it.