Re: Amber Alert & WBZ

["Aaron [Bishop] Read" <aread@speakeasy.net>]

At 01:43 PM 1/2/2003, Shawn Mamros wrote:
>As far as Amber Alerts go, though, EAS is the mechanism used to
>distribute them, and the "entry points" to the EAS in the Boston
>area - the stations which every other station must monitor for an
>EAS alert - are WBZ, WBMX, and NOAA weather radio.  So it's gotta
>go to one of those three to get out to everyone, and it's pretty
>well outside of NOAA's domain...  It'd be a major pain in the
>posterior to have every station in the area set up a separate
>receiver to monitor a fourth/fifth/etc. station just for Amber
>Alerts.

Just to be nitpicky...stations are required to monitor only their PEP's 
(Primary Entry Points) and there are only two per region: the National PEP 
(WBZ-AM for Boston) and the State PEP (WBMX/Mix98.5-FM for Boston).   No 
station is required to monitor NOAA WX/WeatherRadio.

In eastern Mass, the only other "special" station I know of is WXRV/The 
River 92.5 and they handle all EAS origination for Seabrook Nuclear Power 
Plant EAS activations just because of their proximity to the plant.   I 
would assume that any alert by WXRV is monitored by WBZ/WBMX and probably 
forwarded out to all other stations as well.  I should add that I heard 
this second-hand...from a very knowledgeable source who knows his stuff, 
but I didn't hear it from the house's mouth.   EAS is often so confusing 
it's good to hear it from the source before you consider it "gospel truth".


>Moreover, my understanding (which may be mistaken) is that the
>State Police have a direct connection to WBZ and WBMX for EAS
>purposes, which is either automated or goes right to the engineer
>on duty.  If so, the news department at either station would have
>no advantage over anyone else; they'd get the alert at the same
>time as all other stations.
>
>-Shawn Mamros
>E-mail to: mamros@mit.edu

Shawn is essentially correct.  FWIW, there's little point in making the 
distinction between WBZ and WBMX...all EAS events for both stations (which 
are in the same building these days) are handled by Mark Manuelian and his 
team at CBS on Soldiers Field Road.   Any time there's an EAS alert to 
forwarded out to stations monitoring WBZ/WBMX Mark (or one of his approved 
engineers) forwards it right away.  The delay is very short between the 
call from the State Police (or the Mass. Emergency Mgmt Agency's offices, 
or the State House, or the White House)....nowhere near enough to give 
WBZ's news team any sort of real advantage.   However, AFAIK the process is 
NOT automated...there must be a human presence at WBZ/WBMX to type in the 
alert's message text and punch the buttons on their EAS encoder to send out 
the alert/test.


____________________________________________
Aaron "Bishop" Read     aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Technical Consulting / Boston, MA
www.friedbagels.com   AOL-IM: ReadAaron