Doug Smith W9WI wrote:

David wrote:
This is a failure of the EAS, not Clear Channel's business plan.
There ahould mechanisms in place to allow the local authorities to
override the regular programming when a time sensitive local emergency
warrants.

EAS is that mechanism. My understanding is that the local authorities
failed to activate it, or failed to activate an alternative local plan
that, if activated properly, would have alerted personnel who *were* on
duty at the Clear Channel stations and resulted in the broadcast of an
alert.

small problem, NO ONE was answering the phones at those stations.
We have a couple of clear channel stations located in smaller communities
here in Arizona and 90% of the time, they are "robot" stations (unmanned
unless something breaks).


In any case, how much good would it have done if an alert had been
broadcast over Clear Channel's stations? They may have a 95% *share* of
the listening audience at 2am, but how many people are actually
listening to the radio in Minot, North Dakota at 2am?

thats a strawman argument...


The right place for this type of alert is NOAA Weather Radio.
Inexpensive radios are available that can be left on while sleeping,
that can be used to awaken the owner when something like this happens.
(you're not going to leave KZPR "Power 105" on all night every night in
case there's a disaster - the disaster will be when you try to function
in the morning without sleep!)

uh yeah.... it would be helpful of those were built into a standard alarm
clock+radio. a stand alone unit folks simply aren't interested in.


While we're at it, the EAS (and this should happen at the state level)
should be modified to stop running alerts over excessively large areas.
For example, several recent Amber Alerts issued *statewide* in
Tennessee in the early-morning hours. A Memphis resident can do nothing
about a child abduction in Bristol 400 miles away at 3am; if you keep
waking them up for this kind of alert, they're just going to turn off
their NOAA radio. (and next time there's a chemical spill in Memphis...)

there is a reason for statewide alerts man. how far do you think someone in
a car can travel in a couple of hours? try about 120 miles (at speed
limit). now, say that amber alert was delayed by an hour because no one
knew the child in question was missing for that hour, that suddenly makes
the search area an additional 60 miles or so (you can figure out the area
inside a search radius thats 180 miles from center). in any case, it
wouldn't take the perpetrator long to make the 400 miles (especially if
he/she were driving at greater than speed limit).

the purpose of the amber alert system is to have the most pairs of eyes
looking out over the largest practicable area (such as here in Arizona). We
have had would-be kidnapers try and take kids "south of the border here" in
less than 5 hours from time of abduction to time they were caught. the only
reason they were caught was the alert went state wide (and Arizona is a big
place compared to the likes of Tennessee). 6 hours. thats not a lot of
time.....

consider these points next time your kid goes missing and you called for
a "local only" amber alert and it turned out the kidnapper was already
outside of that zone....