Today (November 9) will be the first ever Nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System, and last minute questions and issues continue to come in. One caution relayed to us from a very experienced broadcast technical consultant concerns post-test news coverage. This consultant surmises, probably accurately, that news reports, and perhaps comedy writers, will want to do bits about the test, and may be tempted to use a recording of the test itself in their on-air programs. As we wrote several months ago, if your station broadcasts the EAS tones in any such story or comedy bit, the tones will trigger the EAS monitoring system of any station down the 'daisy chain" line, and thus the emergency information associated with these tones (in this case a national emergency) could end up being broadcast on other stations. The broadcast of the EAS tones where there is no real emergency is a violation of the FCC's rules - so warn your on-air staff now to avoid any use of the real tones in post-alert broadcasts.
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