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.)