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Who Failed the EAS Test?


Weeters

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There are many reports coming out about entire areas failing the National EAS test that took place earlier today. Some areas report receiving a "garbled" message while others received no message at all, or

.

 

What was it like by you?

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on KCBS, graphics and ticker, but NO AUDIO except for end-of-message "duck farts". They're connected to KFWB, the PEP station for the LA area (or at least they should be), so thusly, should be able to carry the full audio message!

 

EDIT: Also, my cable company DID NOT do the black screen with white text like this:

 

[yt]tAG0ktLP0ck[/yt]

 

...and my STB didn't even blink the letters "EAS" on it. Was FiOS not monitoring KFWB at the LA headend?

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Here in Oklahoma City, Cox Communications and KOCO-TV were the failures in the EAS test. KOCO did not show the test until about two minutes into One Life to Live, while the other stations started the test on time (either at 1:00 exactly or up to 40 seconds after).

 

On Cox's analog signal, they replaced the programming on all channels except the locals (somehow, independent station KSBI was the exception) with The Cox Channel (which is channel 3 here, and normally runs full-screen test messages during an EAS test, while only a scroll/tone appears over normal programming on all the other cable channels)... problem is, it was showing an infomercial for a beauty product plugged by Cindy Crawford when they switched to it, since The Cox Channel already ended the test by the time they activated it for the other channels. The same thing did not appear to happen at all on digital cable, though.

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Mixed situation here in Memphis. The local stations all got and carried the alert simultaneously (including the digital subchannels) as they were supposed to, but the audio of the message itself (not the tones) ranged from non-existent to garbled and unintelligible. The only station that had the audio clearly was WKNO, the PBS, so I wonder if perhaps they're our PEP station. Don't honestly know. Biggest problem with the local outlets, it took until 1:04 before the EAS started. Started everywhere at the same time, so I assume it took the full 3-4 minutes for the message to reach Memphis, which is a little concerning given a real emergency.

 

I have DirecTV satellite, and as noted in the original post, it was quite weird on there. They began an across-the-board interrupt right before 1:00, with a full screen slide, but the audio playing was Lady Gaga, which continued until the actual alert started shortly before 1:01. They did not have the audio message either, just the initial tones and scroll which cut off early, with DirecTV then immediately returning back to normal programming.

 

Can't confirm but heard there were several problems with transmission on local Comcast and U-Verse systems, some said they did not get the alert at all. Don't know anything about radio, though did hear one report that Sirius-XM didn't activate for all stations.

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Mixed situation here in Memphis. The local stations all got and carried the alert simultaneously (including the digital subchannels) as they were supposed to, but the audio of the message itself (not the tones) ranged from non-existent to garbled and unintelligible. The only station that had the audio clearly was WKNO, the PBS, so I wonder if perhaps they're our PEP station. Don't honestly know. Biggest problem with the local outlets, it took until 1:04 before the EAS started. Started everywhere at the same time, so I assume it took the full 3-4 minutes for the message to reach Memphis, which is a little concerning given a real emergency.

 

I have DirecTV satellite, and as noted in the original post, it was quite weird on there. They began an across-the-board interrupt right before 1:00, with a full screen slide, but the audio playing was Lady Gaga, which continued until the actual alert started shortly before 1:01. They did not have the audio message either, just the initial tones and scroll which cut off early, with DirecTV then immediately returning back to normal programming.

 

Can't confirm but heard there were several problems with transmission on local Comcast and U-Verse systems, some said they did not get the alert at all. Don't know anything about radio, though did hear one report that Sirius-XM didn't activate for all stations.

 

The reason for DirecTV playing "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga instead of the EAS tone/audio message could probably be that they activated the audio feed from one of the Sonic Tap audio-only music channels by mistake. That's just my theory.

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The reason for DirecTV playing "Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga instead of the EAS tone/audio message could probably be that they activated the audio feed from one of the Sonic Tap audio-only music channels by mistake. That's just my theory.

 

I'm actually pretty sure that's what happened, as they'll usually do that for standby feeds for channels/events that aren't broadcasting yet. Should have muted the audio for this though, a lot of national reports are implying the audio was from DC itself, which of course it wasn't. The EAS tones did interrupt and play when the actual alert came down, it was the following audio message that didn't play, and after a few seconds of silence the concluding tones were sounded, the crawl was stopped midway through, and programming resumed across all channels.

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Here in Houston - KHOU was the fail. They didn't punch the test through until about 2 minutes into "The Talk".

 

We (KRIV) were a close second as - for whatever reason - it crossed our air twice. One at the planned time (with the logo and "This is only a test" graphic) and then a couple minutes later with the generic black text on white background and a scroller saying the message originated at KTRH.

 

At KTRK - Melanie Lawson fronted "bookends" around the EAS test, explaining what was happening.

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I recorded two stations during the national EAS test:

 

KHQ-TV Spokane: EAS kicked in at approximately 11:00:40 PT during Dr. OZ. We got the red banner and the scrolling text, and KHQ master control put up a TEST slide. Audio came in garbled, but audible, and the entire audio message aired. PASS.

 

WGN-TV Chicago: WGN ran a station crawl during Maury at 13:00:05 CT. Station EAS test slide came up at approx 13:02:30 CT, but audio from The Maury Show continued. It wasn't until 13:03:30 CT that the red banner/EAS crawl came up and the alert signal kicked in. Audio message started airing 15 seconds later, but was immediately interrupted by the EOM audio signal. Right after the audio signal, Maury audio came up for 1 sec, then another EAS alert tone aired with a crawl while video went back to Maury. Audio message started airing but stopped about 2 seconds in. WGN then sat on the EAS test graphic and static/dead air for several seconds. The ordeal ended around 13:05:00. FAIL.

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Locally, WTMJ carried it on time (Fitting, as their AM station is the local primary EAS station) and ran a short informational bit before it. WITI was about a minute late (possibly due to the fact they had like 3 cameras in master control covering this) and also ran an informational thing before it. WISN was about 3 minutes late and had a pretty neat graphic (it animated on to the screen). WDJT came on after WISN, and just ran a really fast moving ticker from their LIDIA system, they appear to have not passed the audio.

 

Time Warner Cable got the alert but switched analog channels to QVC. I didn't have digital cable on, but it sounds like the boxes did display their own warnings.

 

All the audio I heard was garbled, with the audio delayed and repeating underneath it.

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