Presidential Alert message appears in Atlanta, Dallas TVs

[Morning]

www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/26882632/u-v ... cy-message

[aliantha]

Every broadcast outlet in America is required by law to test the Emergency Action Notification System once a month. Usually it consists of a warning tone, a slide saying "THIS IS A TEST", and an announcer reading copy explaining it's a test and for viewers/listeners not to be alarmed.

In this case, it looks to me like somebody at the local Fox affiliate screwed up and ran the wrong EAN announcement.

[Morning]

So it is factual that the US govt can take over private broadcasting?

[aliantha]

Um, no. This would only be activated in the event of something like a nuclear attack on the US.

The system has been in place since at least the early '60s. It may have been put in place during the Cuban missile crisis, come to think of it....

[Morning]

It's still scary. I'd much willingly have portuguese knee-jerk panic (the only real outcome for an emergency here, since we never had real wars, pandemics, or natural catastrophes since 1755) than this...

[aliantha]

I worked in broadcasting for a couple of decades, and we never had to activate the system -- except once in the case of a tornado watch, I think.

[Morning]

Goodlooking, heh?

So would this be cause for concern as someone seems to have been told to test-run the system?

[aliantha]

You're asking whether I'm good-looking? Well, I worked mostly in radio. Make of that what you will.

Like I said, there's a test every month. Some idiot probably pulled the wrong tape or whatever and put the wrong thing on the air. If this had been an actual emergency, it wouldn't be a single station - and the tests are run at the station level, not the network level. So I would say it's nothing to be concerned about (except for the idiot who ran the wrong thing ).

[Morning]

My concern was of another nature - maybe someone hit the button a few days early

And there are wondrous things that can be done just by speaking

[wayfriend]

That does NOT look like any kind of real alert system. A real system would not say "force tune", nor refer to the authority to do so as "the White House". If that's real, it's poorly done. But it seems more like a FOX News simulation of Obama declaring dictatorship.

[Morning]

What do you mean, simulation?

[Damelon]

Meh. About 10 years ago someone flipped a wrong switch in Chicago and activated the Emergency Broadcast System there. It had the effect that all the radio stations in Chicago for a couple of minutes were carrying (the designated official news station) WGN. So everyone got to listen to their morning radio show.

It's for things like Hurricanes and natural disasters. It's so outdated now. We have the internet for getting news.

[Dread Poet Jethro]

Hide under your desk
Place your head between your knees
Kiss your ass goodbye

[sgt.null]

That does NOT look like any kind of real alert system. A real system would not say "force tune", nor refer to the authority to do so as "the White House". If that's real, it's poorly done. But it seems more like a FOX News simulation of Obama declaring dictatorship.

and you know this how?

[aliantha]

It doesn't look real to me, either. As I said upthread, there's a full-screen graphic that the TV stations use. They wouldn't put a message over only part of the screen, the way this one was done. And the messages never refer to the White House. As Damelon said, it's used for weather emergencies more than anything else.

[Hashi Lebwohl]

It was probably the result of a bored hacker or a prank in the tech room, especially since the alert hit only on uverse networks in certain areas. I suppose it could have been an actual test but that doesn;t really make it newsworthy for more than a day or two.

It is true that in an actual emergency the FCC can preempt all radio and TV broadcasting but that is the sort of system that actually makes sense. To think of the emergency broadcast system as something sinister puts you in Alex Jones territory and you really don't want to be there.

[peter]

To think of the emergency broadcast system as something sinister puts you in Alex Jones territory and you really don't want to be there.[/color]

Unless you are Alex Jones.

[Or indeed, unless you are Alex Jones. ]

[Hashi Lebwohl]

Alex Jones is part of the weirdness in "keep Austin weird". There are various flavors of weird and his is "nutty". He is one of those people who thinks that HAARP was being used for whatever conspiracy theorists think it was being used for (ranging from 'weather control' to 'the cause of the shuttle Columbia disaster') and that FEMA is still setting up 'relocation camps' for when the Federal Government declares a nationwide state of emergency and FEMAs wide-ranging emergency powers kick in (those powers really do exist, by the way).