1 of 1- RadioActive
- Moderator
Offline 
New Emergency Alert Test To Interrupt Radio & TV This Week
If you're watching TV or listening to the radio on Wednesday, your programming will be interrupted for the latest National Public Alerting System test. This one goes throughout the country, and in Ontario, the test will happen on all media - including your phone - at 12:55 PM.
This one will be pretty benign, but in the past, the system has received complaints that some of the generic computerized voice it uses is often unintelligible, especially when it comes to long strings of numbers, like a licence plate or pronouncing 9-1-1 as "Nine hundred and eleven."
So far, there haven't been a lot of improvements to the way it works, but they're said to be working on constantly improving it. We'll see if this one is better
One thing that really annoys me about these tests is that the on-air folks seem unable to hear them. They'll be in the middle of a sentence or an interview and all of a sudden be cut off by the test, only to resume their show as if nothing happened. There has to be a way they can be told what just went out on their airwaves, so they don't seem so out of touch. (And yes, I'm aware most are listening to their studio output instead of what's going out on air, but there must be a way to defeat that on days when there's a test scheduled.)
- RadioActive
- Moderator
Offline
Re: New Emergency Alert Test To Interrupt Radio & TV This Week
Just a reminder for your TV, radio and phones - the latest emergency test goes at 12:55 PM.
I remember when the U.S. used to test its "Emergency Broadcast System" when I was a kid. They'd air a tone and a test pattern or a test graphic and then a stern sounding announcer would come on and say, "This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for more information."
It used to scare the hell out of me when I was a kid.
I don't think they do it quite this way anymore, but here's one from Channel 49 in Buffalo from 1987, courtesy of Retrontario.
- •
Thread Starter- Forward Power
- Member
Offline
Re: New Emergency Alert Test To Interrupt Radio & TV This Week
If I heard correctly, the U.S. uses the same attention tone(s) on mobile devices when an emergency alert comes up, just like Canada's attention tones (even scarier than the American tones) are the same on radio, TV and wireless.
Early on in the AlertReady era, maybe 2016 or '17, when the alerts were still broadcast-only and not yet sent to mobile devices, I was at the controls for a Junior B hockey broadcast, and we were using an IP feed to get audio from the rink to the studio; I had the over-the-air broadcast up on the monitor speakers. The feed had occasional brief dropouts, given we were in a semi-rural area with not the best Internet at the time, but on one occasion, the audio cut out, and a second later, I heard a weird noise on the speakers. My first thought was the feed had really gone haywire, but then realized it was the emergency alert box (blue Sage Digital ENDEC, for the tech types 'round here) taking over for a child abduction alert.
The mixing console had two sets of LED VU meters, one for program output and one for OTA monitoring, and looking back, I should have looked at the OTA meters and compared them to what was on the program meters. If there had been a feed dropout, both sets of meters would be down; when/if an emergency alert went out, each set of meters would be flickering differently.