Mailbag: When Engineers Collide: A Facebook Fact-Check Gone Wild

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Whether you've worked in broadcasting for decades or just wonder how emergency alerts interrupt your favorite shows, you're about to discover what really happens behind those alarming tones.

After a seemingly harmless social media post about emergency alerts sparked a technical correction from a fellow broadcast engineer, this episode dives into the fascinating mechanics of the Emergency Alert System (EAS). Contrary to what many believe, those familiar two-tone attention signals that jolt you to attention aren't what trigger the broadcast equipment at all. The real work happens before you ever hear those tones, through a digital protocol called Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME).

I break down how modern EAS equipment actually functions, explaining the critical difference between machine triggers and human attention-grabbing elements. We explore why these distinctions matter, how the system evolved from its predecessor (the Emergency Broadcast System), and why certain legacy practices persist decades after they're technically obsolete. It's a perfect example of how broadcast technology often operates at the intersection of engineering necessity and human psychology.

The episode concludes with an exciting announcement about an upcoming ten-part series exploring the complete history of emergency alerting systems, from the earliest days of Conrad through to today's virtual implementations. Whether you're a broadcast professional looking to deepen your technical understanding or simply curious about how these public safety systems work, you'll gain valuable insights into the technology that delivers critical information when it matters most.

Follow Fully Modulated wherever you get your podcasts and leave a review to help others discover these deep dives into broadcast technology. Have a correction or question of your own? Send it my way – it might inspire a future episode!

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Fully Modulated is an independent podcast and website, not affiliated with or endorsed by any station, media company, or network. All opinions are solely my own.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, quick favor before we start.
If you're enjoying FullyModulated, hit the follow button
on your podcast app ApplePodcasts, spotify and share it
with someone who geeks out aboutradio, emergency alerting,
television and radiobroadcasting.
Also, make sure you leave areview.
It's the small thing thatreally helps a lot.
Hey, welcome back to FullyModulated, the podcast that

(00:56):
decodes the inner workings ofbroadcast systems and the people
who keep them running.
I'm Tyler Woodward and todaywe're doing something a little
different.
Call it a mailbag episode, callit a fact check or just call it
what happens when a broadcastengineer gets a little too
confident on social media.

(01:16):
So a few days ago I postedsomething about the emergency
alert system on facebook.

(01:36):
Really short post, just a quickexplainer.
That mentioned how broadcastersuse the classic two tone eas
sound.
You know the one?
We call it an attention tone.
It's that blaring noise thatjust kind of cuts through all
the noise, harmless, right.
Well, enter Joe Fleming, abroadcast engineer over at

(01:56):
Virginia Public Media.
He slides into the commentswith a reply that basically says
quote actually, no, the tonesdidn't trigger anything.
That's what the same headersare for, unquote, and you know.
You know what he's right.
But also, I never said thetones triggered the gear.
I didn't mention anything aboutwireless emergency alerts that

(02:19):
he also went on about.
I didn't bring up dual tonetriggering.
I didn't claim stations areeven still using 70s era
equipment.
But the post was vague and ifyou read it with a certain level
of technical scrutiny which,let's be honest, engineers do I
can see how it could come acrossas a little oversimplified.

(02:43):
I replied maybe a little toostrongly at first but after
messaging back and forth withJoe turns out Joe's not a bad
guy.
Just wanted to make sure I gotthe information accurate and,
quite frankly, I respect that.

(03:17):
The emergency alert system worksbecause of a structured format
called SAME Specific AreaMessage Encoding format, called
same specific area messageencoding.
That's the burst of digitaldata you hear at the start of an
alert.
It carries the type of alert,the areas affected, the
originator and the duration ofthe warning watch message.

(03:39):
What, what have you?
The digital data is whatactually triggers the eas
equipment.
If you're running somethinglike a sage index, a dazdak,
it's listening for valid sameheaders from a designated source
.
If those match your station'sfilter settings, the alert goes
through.

(04:00):
Then comes the attention tone,the solid two-tone signal that
everybody recognizes.
It's loud, it's annoying, it'ssupposed to be.
But it's not the part of thestream that triggers the gear.
It's just there to make surepeople pay attention.
Hence the why it's called theattention tone.
And it works.

(04:22):
That's there's a reason thatthose tones have been used for
decades.
But the important stuff, thestuff that matters to your
station's hardware, happensbefore the tone ever actually
plays.
That's what Joe was trying toget across.
Here's the thing, and it's whyI don't mind getting called out

(04:57):
on this stuff.
From a listener's point of viewview, the tones feel like a
trigger.
You hear the beeps, your tvcuts in, the radio switches over
.
The crawl starts, boom, analert.
You see the red bar, you hearthe message.
The timing makes it seem likethe tone is doing the heavy
lifting to the general audience.

(05:20):
Even in the industry it's easyto conflate what the public
hears with what the gear isactually doing.
And, to be fair, in the old EBSdays the tones did serve a
mechanical trigger function insome cases.
But EAS, which replaced EBS in1996, 1997.

(05:42):
And we've been in the digitalrealm ever since.
Still, a lot of engineers,especially those who've been
around since the EBS days, orwork near nuclear plants with
legacy setups will tell you thetones were kept around
voluntarily in some areas.
Old habits die hard.

(06:03):
So Joe's comment not just soJoe's comment is more of a
reminder that these systems arelayered and that clarity matters
when you're explaining them,especially in public forums.

(06:36):
If you've got a correction, aquestion or even just a spicy
opinion about something I mighthave said, send it my way.
Seriously, you might just endend up inspiring an episode like
this one.
And hey, if you found thisbreakdown useful, share the show
with someone who's trying towrap their head around EAS.
Follow the podcast and leave arating or review.

(06:59):
Wherever you're listening.
It helps the show get in frontof more folks who care about
this stuff as much as I do.
And just to give you a sneakpeek coming up in a week or so I
will be launching the firstfull season of fully modulated,
which actually will be focusingon the emergency alert system

(07:22):
how it came to be, dating allthe way back to Conrad, into the
EBS days, all the way up toright now where EAS is being
considered, taking it from ahardware form down to the
software form in virtualenvironments.
So I got a full 10-episodeseason coming up about the
emergency alert system andeverything that predated it.

(07:43):
So be on the lookout for that.
Make sure you hit upfullymodulatedcom, subscribe on
Apple Podcasts, spotify, tify,tune in and iheart radio, so you
never miss an update when Irelease one.
Thanks again to joe for keepingme honest, even if it got a

(08:08):
little intense at first.
This has been Fully Modulated.
I'm Tyler Woodward and I'llcatch you next time you