If This Had Been An Actual Emergency...
by Sean Carolan

Day melts into night. Sitting on the porch, you listen to the radio's endless parade of the summer's most disposable hits, sip a cool beverage and enjoy the final hours of a fabulous summer. The scene is shattered by the piercing wail of a siren, first off in the distance, then nearby, then fading until the sounds of a summer night reassert themselves.

What happened? Interest piqued, you scan your options, which are few. The radio's parade keeps parading. Ultimately, you make a mental note to scan the local paper the next morning, and drift back into a cachaca-fueled reverie. The lethal gas cloud that will envelop you fifteen minutes hence has yet to arrive.

Once upon a time, radio stations were expected to exhibit a responsibility to their listeners, not only in their daily programming, but also in their commitment to the local community. They were expected to provide some level of insight into that community's inner workings; the best of them did their darndest to make that entertaining. Above all else, they were expected to provide a warning if disaster, or impending disaster, were to strike.

As of 1996 (as embodied in the telecommunications act that bears that year of passage) radio stations, poised to become the "radio industry", were free to define "community responsibility" as "whatever gets the highest ratings out of the community, and any other community that happens to be near it". Gone were the local news organizations, remote broadcasts from scenes of curiosity, disaster or tragedy, as well as any pretense of local influence.

Gone, also, was the trusty Cold-War-era workhorse, the Emergency Broadcast System. It has been replaced by a system that does not jar listeners nearly as much, and that does not have to be tested nearly as regularly. Which, to this engineer's ear, is a recipe for disaster.

We used to joke about how the EBS tone would be the last sound you'd hear before the bombs dropped, but in fact, the system helped in less apocalyptic ways. Tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods, and the occasional lethal gas cloud were all heralded by the EBS tones, as all local radio stations switched simultaneously to broadcast one station's advisories about the looming danger.

Now, the music plays on. Failing some notification using the new system, radio stations keep the format pumping, with news regarded as a ratings-numbing annoyance. "Want news? Listen to the news station, and don't bother us."

So, I put it to you: is the station nearest you doing absolutely nothing to keep you informed? If this worries you, complain to that station, and to the FCC. "Informing the community" is a basic part of their license, and if they're found deficient, they'll lose it to someone else that'll be scared into doing it right. Note: If your answer to the above question is "I like it that way", watch out for that lethal gas cloud...it's a doozy.

©2001 Sean Carolan