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A national test of the Emergency Alert System [telecom]

The first national test of the U.S.A.'s Emergency Alert System is scheduled for Wednesday, November 9 and all participants of the system are required to participate. The participants include TV stations, radio stations, cable TV systems, satellite TV systems, and wireline (telephone line) video systems. Participants classified as non- participating national sources are required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) to participate in the national test, too, even though they may choose not to relay national alerts at other times.

The test is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM (Central) on November 9 and last about three minutes, which would be longer than a regular monthly test of the Emergency Alert System. The maximum limit for all other alerts, including alerts issued during tests, of the Emergency Alert System is two minutes.

References:

Emergency Alert System Nationwide Test

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FEMA, FCC Announce Nationwide Test Of The Emergency Alert System
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Emergency Alert System
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Reply to
Monty Solomon
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I've put a copy of the Public Service Advertisement they've been running to let people know about this over at:

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(about 4.5 megs).

Curiously, the FCC states that the NOAA All Hazards Radio system is NOT part of this test.

Reply to
danny burstein

The test will be transmitted as an EAN -- "Emergency Alert, National". While most parts of the EAS are tested regularly, the EAN function -- which is designed to allow the executive authorities in Washington to take control of all broadcast facilities in the country simultaneously[1] -- has never been intentionally tested. I say "intentionally" because there have been a few occasions in the past where an EAN was mistakenly sent out by an authority that is authorized to originate other kinds of alerts.

The test is scheduled for midday because the standard for EAN requires EAS endecs (which are positioned late in a station's air chain) to seize the audio input until they receive a message termination code from the source of the alert. If for some reason the end-of-message isn't properly decoded, a station will need to hard power-cycle the endec in order to return to normal programming, so all stations will need to have staff on site.

-GAWollman

[1] It is thought that the only purpose of this function is for the President to announce that everyone on earth will die in six minutes when World War III is fought, and many broadcasters believe that in a post-Cold War world there is no reason for this function to be maintained. This does account for the lack of testing.
Reply to
Garrett Wollman

On Mon, 31 Oct 2011 02:34:47 +0000, Garrett Wollman wrote: ........

"The end of the world" will probably not be televised now, but it may well be on Twitter - for just a few minutes, of course......

Reply to
David Clayton

Am I the only one who thought [1] would refer to ECOMCON from "Seven Days in May"?

Reply to
Ron

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