Mike Stafford confirmed on Wednesday that Corus Quay is about to undergo another of its infamous "fire drills" Thursday morning and that this one would interrupt his show. Apparently, every staffer is epxected to participate, even if they're on the air at the time. This clearly isn't a problem for music outlets - a Q107 can put on "Stairway To Heaven" and no one will notice. 

But a talk station is a different animal and you can't have the host just suddenly disappear for two minutes or more or air 120 seconds of another show from a different day out of the blue. Stafford was speculating they might even go to a 2-minute song to cover the gap instead of suddenly having a reroll appear out of nowhere.

I can't help but wonder about this policy. While it's certainly important to pay attention to fire alarms, I can't recall any other station that forces its own hosts off the air while one is going on - especially if it's only a drill. I'd be curious to know how other announcer-intensive places - like, say, NewsTalk1010 or 680 News - handle these kinds of things. 

In my TV newsroom, for example, if there's a drill or an actual fire, strobe lights go off and there's a very muted bell that rings. But you'd never know it on air. And not everyone piles out of the building if a show happens to be on unless it's confirmed there's a real hot spot somewhere inside the building. Plus, it's a lot easier to schedule something like that at a time other than 5, 6 or 11, the main times for a newscast.

I've never heard of a place that not only shoos their on-air staff out the door, but where you can actually hear the sirens going off on mic. Yet that's what 640 does. Seems kinda odd to me and I wonder why they do that.