{"id":2379,"date":"2011-08-24T07:31:42","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T11:31:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=2379"},"modified":"2011-08-30T16:40:01","modified_gmt":"2011-08-30T20:40:01","slug":"november-9th-testing-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/?p=2379","title":{"rendered":"November 9th – testing the “End of the World”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Test<\/a><\/p>\n

Other than doing the monthly tests, the Emergency Alert System<\/span> (EAS – formerly known as the EBS “Had this been an actual emergency<\/em><\/strong>…”) is voluntary.\u00a0\u00a0 Radio stations can let the EAS take immediate control of their station, record the alert and play it when and if they want, or completely ignore the alert – with one exception<\/span>.<\/p>\n

The EAS was largely designed with one goal in mind.\u00a0\u00a0 After World War II and the Russians had “The Bomb”, the Federal Government needed to stoke the fear of the public that a nuclear attack on the United States<\/span> could happen at any time (“Duck and Cover!”).\u00a0\u00a0 The first version of this notification system was created in 1951, but the more thorough EBS that most of us remember was created in 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis<\/p>\n

History of EBS\/EAS<\/a><\/p>\n

In 1951, FM radio and TVs were not yet in use by the public in any significant way – AM radio still ruled the world and at night the 50 kW “clear channel” stations owned the country. \u00a0\u00a0 My first car (a 1962 Plymouth Valiant) had a peculiar radio – it was AM only (not peculiar for the time) and had two little discrete triangles on the tuning dial.<\/p>\n

In the event of an actual emergency, all radio stations would immediately be turned off, and government selected “official government news” stations would suddenly appear on 640 kHz and 1240 kHz.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Having “unofficial” communications that might panic the public <\/span>was not acceptable in a “free” country.\u00a0\u00a0 Even Ham radio operators are required to turn off their transmitters.<\/p>\n

Over the years, this technology for the Federal Government taking over control of every broadcast outlet in America has never been tested<\/span><\/strong>, although it was accidentally activated in 1971, creating awareness that few people knew what to do or did it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The national EBS alert is the only thing hardwired into the system.\u00a0 The only way to test it is to use it.<\/p>\n

When the button is pressed <\/span>in the White House, every radio and TV station in America surrenders control to the White House<\/strong>.<\/span> Testing that capability would mean the test itself could create panic (and possibly political blow back) since most people don’t know that power exists.<\/p>\n

November 9th 2011, at 2 PM Eastern Time,<\/strong><\/span> this national capability will be tested.\u00a0\u00a0 The FCC and Homeland Security<\/span> will oversee a test – to make sure that in the event\u00a0 President Obama has issued an Executive Order to\u00a0 dissolve the government of the United States and the country is now under martial law (hypothetically of course) – <\/em><\/strong>that every radio and TV station complies with his lawful order. \u00a0\u00a0 The system also applies to cable TV systems, and the FCC would like to require Cell Phones to also be unilaterally controllable by the National EAS alerts.<\/p>\n

So assuming that Glenn Beck doesn’t provoke the end of the world today, at least by November 9th, we’ll be sure we are prepared.\u00a0\u00a0 You can never be too prepared or too safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Test Other than doing the monthly tests, the Emergency Alert System (EAS – formerly known as the EBS “Had this been an actual emergency…”) is voluntary.\u00a0\u00a0 Radio stations can let the EAS take immediate control of their station, record … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-radio-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2379"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2525,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2379\/revisions\/2525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/streamingradioguide.com\/startingover\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}