Re: EAS

[brouder@juno.com (Ed Brouder)]

Steve Ordinetz wrote:
>...why can't the "Voice of Authority (tm)" be be even remotely
intelligible?  
>Not one RMT or National Wx Service bulletin I've ever heard or aired
were 
>even close to this.  If we can barely understand the message on our air
monitors, 
>certainly the  average listener can't make out the message...what's the
purpose of 
>airing it?

Ah, the $64,000 question!  Again, you can blame the FCC for basing EAS so
heavily on NOAA Weather Radio, which delivers an average 3-5k
phone-quality feed to its transmitters.  Remember in the day before
satellites when that's how all  network audio lines sounded?
Today, most NOAA feeds are re-broadcast over FM quality stations where
the miserable audio is really noticeable.  Stations are free to re-read
the weather copy (if they still subscribe to wire services AND if there
is a live person on duty to do it) over locally-originated EAS tones, but
very few stations have bothered to train their staffs how the box works.

NOAA is currently experimetning with a synthetic voice which generates a
spoken message from code, but from everything I've seen on the EAS
newsgroup, the quality is worse (if possible) than the telephone feeds to
the NOAA transmitters.  So, the job is never really done!

Ed Brouder, Chairman
NH State Emergency Communications Committee

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