Area : I_UFO

Date : Sep 27 '95, 14:36                                                       
From : Patrick K. Frye                                           114:1/0
To   : ALL                                 
Subj : Alleged Face on Mars                                                  
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ

From: "Patrick K. Frye" 
Subject: Re: Alleged Face on Mars
Message-ID:   <950927.135934.EDT.PKFRYE@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
Date:         Wed, 27 Sep 95 13:36:05 EDT

->  SearchNet's   i_ufo-l   Mailing List

Concerning the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS).

The FCC mandates that all broadcast stations, TV, Radio (FM & AM), etc. do a
practice EBS test each week - or when I worked at a radio station it was one
per week.  Now, the reason most of us never see/hear them is they are usually
run during low viewing/listening hours which interpret as low advertising hours
 and, thus, not much money is lost by the stations for not running an ad
during that time.  Each station schedules the test itself, although,
on occassion, the signal will come down the wire for all stations to do the
test.

The real EBS is not what you are hearing/seeing at home; the system is the
wire service and broadcast put out by the government - not sure what part -
that determines there is an emergency.  Some stations when they receive the
alert go off the air, some play a 1 Khz tone and some broadcast normally
informing the public there is an emergency.  The reason some stations go off
the air is to remove clutter from the airwaves and to make it easier to
get information (correct) to certain stations; there is an assumption that
communciations will be in disarray.  Some stations broadcast a tone; that tone
is to alert ;other stations - usually small and small market staions - that
are not on a wire service or are not hooked up any other way to be signalled
that there is an emergency.  These small stations will have a radio receiver
tuned to a close by station that will broadcast a tone, when that tone is
received by a small station, the receiver, which has a device to detect the
tone, will turn on and the people at the small station will hear the warning
and they will either rebroadcast the warning, give advice on which station to
turn to, and or go off the air.  Actually they might do all three or some of
all three.

An interesting note to all of this is that several years ago it was proposed
(I'm not sure by whom) that the EBS have control over the broadcast stations
so that the EBS people could insure everything went smoothly and by plan.
Examples were given that if this were done, then the National Weather Service
could be included and weather bulletins could be run by the NWS directly
cutting down the time to get the weather bulletin on the air.  Luckly,
broadcasters are an independent lot (I know that many of you may find that
hard to believe) and there were/are howels of protest.  The probem is, I don't
know if that idea was ever buried and forgotten or it is still in the works.
That is the kind of thing that gets buried in this law legislation.

An interesting note to all this is about 5 to 10 years ago (sorry to be so
vague but I don't remember) a EBS bulleting went out to all the stations, but
the Fed. agency that does that forgot to put the test message with the message.
Only about 10 percent of the stations followed protocol and did what they are
suppost to do.  Most just ignored the message or ran a test broadcast.  The
gov. was hot.  The gov. said that although it was a mistake, the stations
should have responded properly.

Each station has a packet called the EBS (something, again I don't remember)
and it is sealed.  The seal is to be broken only in the event of notification
of an actual emergency by the gov.  In that packet was the instructions for
that station and a code or authenticator word so the staion would know it
is the "real" gov. sending the message.  I worked at a college FM station and
we opened our to see what was inside - I know, damn anarchists.

When it happens, there will be only a few stations on the air and all of our
information will come from them, that assumes that the rest of the stations
go off the air.  The media is the first thing seized in time of crisis.
Remember how we took over the radio stations in Panama when we invaded that
country?

Anyway, this is what I remember about the EBS system, albeit 20 years ago.

Pat

Patrick K. Frye, (Pat), Television Production Manager
Instructional Resources Center, South Instructional Plaza
University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602-3015
Voice - (706) 542-1582, FAX - (706) 542-0518
BITNET - PKFrye@UGA
INTERNET - PKFrye@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU

-> Send "subscribe   i_ufo-l  " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: "Patrick K. Frye" 

---SnetMgr 0.60 [r0001]
 * Origin: i_ufo-l@world.std.com <-> FidoNet (114:1/0)