The Emergency Broadcast System Will Not Work.

(This Post First Ran In February 2005.)

The Emergency Broadcast System is a dud!

A few days ago, someone hit the wrong button and the signal was flashed to all broadcasting stations in Connecticut that the entire state was to be evacuated… at once. So, where’d they all go? Nowhere. No one moved.

Why, you may ask. It’s simple, really. The Emergency Broadcast System doesn’t work.

Oh, it will work by delivering the message from one broadcast station to the other (so long as their receivers are working... and activate... when they receive the tone telling them to interrupt the regular broadcasting of that particular station and start sending, immediately, the EBS broadcast.), but so far as alerting anyone outside the broadcasting industry, it is a dud. The thing is… it has always been a dud since it’s inception.

I spent 30 years in the broadcasting business. We know it won’t work, simply because it never has.

The incident in Connecticut is only the latest in a long line of similar incidents to which, nobody responded… save the government.

Broadcasters have long known, and have long protested, to the government that this EBS system will not work. It’s like butting your head against the wall. The government has spent millions upon millions of dollars to create this thing and they will not admit it is a dud.

There should be a better way to get an emergency announcement out to as many Americans as possible.

The viewer and listener’s brain rarely processes those “tones” and “crawlers” on the TV screens and that “godawful buzzing” on the radio anymore. They are now so frequent they have become a part of the background noise of our daily lives. It is an annoyance more than anything else.

It is way past time for the US Government to toss the EBS system and create a system that will work. If there is such a thing. Frankly, I’m not sure there is.

Longstreet