Pardon The Interruption

Back in my disc jockey days, the Emergency Alert System was a pain in the ass. It was this black box in the corner of the room that taunted you like a time bomb. Even though we ran scheduled alerts every couple of weeks, occasionally it would come on without warning and spit a piece of paper at you, demanding you run an alert in the next few minutes. You would then have to stop whatever you were doing to take care of it as soon as the next song ended and that was a whole other process. It was a series of buttons to press, things to sign and papers to staple, all of which proved that just because some people can make it into college, they aren't smart enough to handle following five steps worth of directions. It had gotten to the point that we had to make sure the people working when they were scheduled were not complete morons. Still, there was nothing we could do about the unscheduled one - those were simply a crapshoot. All we could hope for was it happened during the day and that a director was nearby.

I was thinking about that this afternoon as the first nation-wide emergency alert was issued. After years of sending out tests at various times to test the readiness of locations individually and without warning, the people in charge decided it was time to go full-scale. This test was designed to truly test the system across the country, both TV and radio, all at once. But, at least the let us know it was coming and the stations went the next step of telling us it was coming. In fact, the build-up to the test was a little silly, as I repeatedly saw reminders every time I turned on the on-Demand section of my TV. Considering that the majority of people try and ignore these things when the come on and the test was happening at 2 in the afternoon, it felt as though everyone was trying just a little too hard to prove this was important. (This is the part where I should point out that I never heard a single EAS on the morning of September 11th, where one might have come in handy.)

Now, I was in my truck when the clock hit 2 and here's what really drove me crazy: stations cut into the middle of songs to play the alert message. I hate it when radio stations cut into songs as it is, but I really hate it when they do it unnecessarily. They knew this alert was coming, so why not plan the playlist accordingly? Have a break in there which allows the DJ to prattle on for a minute and then go to the alert when it is issued, rather than stopping a popular song in the middle for an interruption you knew was on the way. I've done that job before and it is not very hard to plan it out so that the music stops at very specific times. I'm terrible at math and I would do it all the time; these guys use computers and they still couldn't figure it out so that music wasn't cut off mid-chorus. It's just another way that things like iPods and other personal music players are beating up on radio - they never have to break in for stuff like this.

That, of course, leads to the larger issue of just why they bother to send out emergency alerts on radio anymore. TV I can understand, but radio continues to slide down the ladder of media in this country. As the alert was going on I was at a red light with a bunch of kids at a bus stop right next to me and not a single one of them appeared to be listening to the radio on their headphones. If this had been an actual emergency they would have had no idea. As people keep moving away from radio I wouldn't be surprised if in the future people try and figure out a way to send out emergency alerts to smart phones and other personal media devices. It would certainly make sure that whatever message they need to get out reaches everyone. Then again, they would probably still send the alerts out right in the middle of my favorite song.