Emergency Broadcast: Difference between revisions
dab to the various We Interrupt This Program, This Just In manual interruptions for breaking news emergencies
("Amber Alert", not "AMBER Alert" - it's a girl's name, not an acronym) |
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The Emergency Broadcast is a means of public warning and public annoyance alike. Hearing an '''Emergency Broadcast''' warning of actual danger may lead to [[Oh Crap]], [[Mass "Oh Crap"]], the need for [[Bring My Brown Pants|one's brown pants to be brought]] - in that way it may be the ultimate [[Brown Note]]. On the other hand, a test or a warning of something that doesn't affect you (e.g. a missing child warning, a flood when you're on high ground, a tsunami when you're 100 miles inland) may be a [[Berserk Button]] and lead to frustration with [[Crying Wolf]]. Another frequent frustration is when an actual alert has such horrible sound quality you can't understand what's being said. In many countries, [[Atomic Hate]] was the primary reason for the system's creation, and it eventually (and thankfully) ended up never being used for that purpose and being used for many others.
Needless to say, [[Truth in Television]].
This list covers automated emergency broadcast or emergency alert systems which interrupt broadcast radio/TV or cable TV, plus regional disaster warnings which trigger alarms on specialised weather radios or mobile telephones. In the highest-profile [[Breaking News]] incidents, such as 9/11 or the [[JFK]] assassination, it makes no sense to interrupt by automated means as stations have already manually [[We Interrupt This Program|interrupted an entertainment program]] or [[This Just In|a routine, lower-priority news report]] to cut away to their own live news coverage of a major incident. For localised dangers, such as an incoming [[tornado]]? A timely automated warning can save lives.
<big>'''Emergency Broadcast systems by country'''</big>▼
In some respects, [[Older Than Radio]] and [[Older Than Television]] in that it was not unheard of to "stop the presses" at a print newspaper to [[Extra! Extra! Read All About It!|create a modified edition with the breaking news event]] in place of the original front page.
'''Australia:''' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM4gPCLzLO8 The Standard Emergency Warning Signal], used primarily in Queensland to warn of cyclones, but now possibly being expanded for bushfires and terror threats in the rest of the country. Possibly, along with Japan's EWS and Alberta's EPWS, one of the few Emergency Broadcast systems to originally be developed specifically for a weather/geological hazard rather than [[Atomic Hate]].
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