Serious business
Dec 18, 2011 5:01 PM, By Ned Soseman
This photo, posted on the Twitter page of Monmouth County, NJ, resident Christiana Rutkowski, shows the alert she received on Dec. 12. Photo courtesy Christiana Rutkowski.
The holidays are always a wonderful time of year. For some, it’s time for the annual station holiday party, complete with blooper reels, bad jokes, thimble-size cocktails, bland food and at least one guy in a leisure suit. It’s also the last opportunity for many to use or lose 2011 vacation days. For managers, it may also mark the beginning of a new fiscal year, meaning some complicated technical decisions will have to be made that prove to be visionary for years to come.
Where do managers get the information to make such crucial decisions? Some visit NAB and CES. More often, they rely on experience, word of mouth, trade publications like Broadcast Engineering, newsletters like this and salespeople. Our mission is to provide dependable, accurate, unbiased product and technology information. Then you can make enlightened decisions by knowing what questions to ask salespeople.
Hello, 2012
December in the technical side of the broadcast industry is about as quiet as it gets. Sweeps are over. New products are few. Vacations and holidays are enjoyed as anticipation and preparation grows for the annual flood of new gear, technology and showmanship beginning at the 2012 CES and again at the 2012 NAB Show. Both are held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. With exhibits open from Jan. 10-13, 2012, CES expects approximately 2700 exhibitors. CES 2011 attracted about 150,000 people, including nearly 50,000 exhibitors and 6000 from the press. In contrast, the 2011 NAB Show attracted about 93,000 visitors and 1500 exhibitors.
CES is huge, and between you and me, it’s more of a fun show to visit for a couple of reasons. The fact that many of the vendors and visitors just finished the holiday sales season and are ready to relax and dream a little creates a unique show atmosphere. The second reason is that it’s a great place to spot trends, meet friends, play with new toys and find some prototypes if you know how to ask.
Curious engineers
Late one night, back when TV stations signed off every night for transmitter maintenance, another engineer and I crossed a line we could no longer ignore. We were working the transmitter maintenance shift, and the line was the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) emergency message audio cart. It hung in a prominent spot on the wall in master control. It was sealed in a plastic bag along with printed FCC instructions sealed in a very official looking pink envelope. So what do a couple of curious young engineers do with probably the best kept secret at the station?
We surreptitiously opened the sealed bag and the official envelope and read the instructions. They were spooky. Then we auditioned the audio cart. Even at 2 a.m. with the transmitter off, it was the scariest sound we ever heard from a loudspeaker. It was precisely what our friends, families and community would hear should that moment come. We could only imagine how the announcer must have felt when he recorded it, and how the community would respond if it ever heard it. That audio cart was the most powerful thing I ever held in one hand. We sealed it all back up and never mentioned it again, until now.
Cue the confusion
Imagine you’re a Verizon Android cell phone customer in New Jersey’s Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris or Ocean Counties. At 12:26 p.m. on Monday Dec. 12, 2011, you receive an alert that says “CMAS ALERT - Civil Emergency in this area until 1:24 PM EST Take Shelter Now U.S. Govern” such as the one in the photo. It happened last week. How would you have reacted?
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