>>>> and it was an "amber alert" about a missing boy in our town.
> Why would they expect people sitting at home in their residences to
> know the location of a missing child?
First, they only notify people within a few miles of the "last seen" location. Secondly, it is only at the behist of the police department. Thirdly, ours is a rural community and someone might just have seen a kid walking or biking on the street.
Is there enough likelihood of success that it justifies disturbing
> thousands or tens of thousands of people?
> I'm in favor of locating missing children, but these "Amber alerts"
> may have gotten out of hand.
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Around here, the cable company runs a
> ticker strip message for missing children. Actually, the city of
> Independence has that built into the cableco franchise agreement: a
> channel for the high school and college's use (channel 22); a channel
> for the city itself (channel 14), and an 'all-purpose' general channel
> for anyone to use (channel 10). And the police dispatchers can 'flip a
> switch' and take over _all_ channels on a moment's notice for things
> like tornado warnings, missing children, crimes in progress, etc. The
> city insisted that these channels all be in the 'free, basic' part of
> the spectrum so that everyone would be able to listen to them, with or
> without payment for the premium channels (which they refer to as
> 'basic extended' (channels 25 and upward). Normally, they content
> themselves with putting stuff on channel 14, only going elsewhere when
> a dire emergency requires it, for example, the tornado spotted about a
> week ago, or about a year ago when the girl from Independence High
> School turned up 'missing' (which turned out to be a hoax). PAT]
Yes! I run the local cable access TV and want to do exactly that!