December 10, 1997
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The news just came in two weeks ago that there will be no National Periodic Test of the Emergency Alert System this year, marking this for a second consecutive year. There has been no announcement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but a notice to broadcasters from the Federal Communications Commission says in a public notice it will not take place. FEMA officials previously told Inside Radio that they were planning the next national EAS and WEA test for the fall of 2025.
It is unclear why those plans have changed, but the agency has had significant staffing cuts in recent months as part of the Trump administrationâs effort to scale back the size of the federal government. There may not be an EAS test for radio stations to prepare for, but there is an annual filing required by the FCC. The Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau says every EAS participant, including radio stations, must submit whatâs known as âForm Oneâ in the EAS Test Reporting System for 2024 by October 3.
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October 13, 1991
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WLOX-TV's studio after Katrina, on September 13, 2005.
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On February 6, 1995, a few minutes before 8:00 PM ET, Warner Cable viewers across Akron and Summit County, Ohio experienced an unexpected nonexistent emergency on their television sets in Summit County, after its then-new installations of its emergency override system accidentally triggered a "real emergency" message, which is just a character generation scroll at the bottom. Warner officials confirmed that this then-new character generator scroll unit replaced an earlier EOS unit in the Fall of 1994. This incident led to a flood of telephone calls triggered by the misleading message might be prevented anyone from reporting both a real crime or a fire.
The following day, the Akron Fire Department gave the Warner Cable employees help on how to use the equipment. The person who have figured out a solution of this glitch came from District Chief Charles Strum who managed the fire department dispatchers. Strum was watching Part 1 of the PBS special "Inside The FBI" via WNEO/WEAO when the character generator appeared at the bottom of his screen, asking residents to turn to local news organizations for more information. Dispatchers in nearby Stow called Akron officials if there's any emergency, none as they say. The telephone lines for Stow and Silver Lake were out of service at the time, and officials wanted to use their warning system to tell residents to report problems to Cuyahoga Falls dispatchers. Warner spokesman Bill Jasso replied that Warner Cable did display a crawl message saying that there is no emergency. That clamed many viewers but didn't stop the calls.
Five messages were displayed throughout the 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM timeframe. A third crawl message contains information about the telephone problems for Stow and Silver Lake by crawl. That was almost good enough but the most detailed explanation wasn't broadcast until Warner Cable technicians were able to type in a fourth message with text filling the entire screen on one of the public access channels saying that there is no emergency and people should stop calling safety officials. At 9:20 PM that evening, a rebroadcast of the third crawl message appeared while the final message was broadcast at 9:40 PM.
Akron dispatchers dialed the number of their telephone link to Warner Cable's Local Access Alert system which the system allows them to select only one out of nine prewritten warnings, and at approximately 8:15 PM that evening, dispatchers triggered the warning. They expected the system to allow them to speak directly to viewers and they would verbally explain the problem in Stow from the previous establishment Warner Cable had, but the new system doesn't have the entirety of that feature. In addition, the system itself didn't work with newer TV sets that have the mute feature. Strum replied that the emergency signal triggered the mute function so owners of these sets would get silence instead of a warning.
The main problem about the new system is that the nine preprogrammed emergency messages just don't include enough detail to be useful. Strum replied that he does not believe that the new system can be modified to allow dispatchers to speak, but Strum is not absolutely sure. Jasso said that one way to resolve the problem is to give dispatchers a way to put a detailed message on the screen of the public access channels, and the warning messages that crawl at the bottom could then be modified to tell viewers to check the channel to find the information.
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Fox network? Think again!
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BREAKING NEWS - MSNBC WILL BE CHANGING ITS NAME SOON
As the cable news channel MSNBC splits up with NBC News, it is also dropping the NBC from its name. Later this year, the channel will become MS NOW, which stands for "My Source for News, Opinion, and the World". âThis new branding underscores our mission: to serve as a destination for breaking news and best-in-class opinion journalism, all rooted in accurate and reported facts,â MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler said in an internal memo. MSNBC was originally launched in 1996 as a partnership between Microsoft (The MS part) and NBC. When Microsoft sold its stake in the venture, the name stayed the same.
But MSNBC is going through a much bigger change this year as corporate parent Comcast spins off most of its cable channels into a new company called Versant. The split is set to take effect later this year.
Versant CEO Mark Lazarus said Monday that Comcastâs NBCUniversal, which is keeping the NBC broadcast network and other assets, has decided to keep the iconic peacock symbol for its own purposes. âThis means we will redesign our logos where the peacock has been incorporated into our brands,â he wrote a memo, like at the Golf Channel and CNBC. He said the business news channel CNBC will keep its moniker, noting that it was originally the Consumer News and Business Channel. (The brand also has multiple licensing deals outside the US that utilize the name.)
Renaming MSNBC will go a long way toward resolving the brand confusion that has roiled MSNBC and NBC News for decades.
The cable channel has long relied on NBC News correspondents and infrastructure for news coverage. But as the channelâs top-rated shows moved to the left in the Bush and Obama years, and NBC News stayed in the proverbial middle, the cross-pollination caused internal headaches and some suggestions about a name change. During the Trump years, the differences between the two entities have been even more pronounced; MSNBCâs Rachel Maddow recently said âwe have a consolidating dictatorship in our country,â which is certainly not how NBC News anchors describe the Trump administration.
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WTVI (Late 1980s)
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KHBS/KHOG (1989)
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Partial WNPT Emergency Alert System screen (Early 2000s)
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