Why we don't play the Emergency Alert System tone on TV

theregister.com

17 points·Stratoscope··9 comments

"The use of the sound is prohibited to prevent people becoming desensitized to something you should only hear in the most dire circumstances."

and then the "protect the children" people created Amber Alerts, which have done exactly that

I have amber alerts disabled because I can't imagine recognising someone driving around, with everything else going on in life.

I have only heard the emergency broadcast system for real in the '89 bay area quake (I've heard tests many times). But I understand it's used frequently (legitimately) in tornado-prone areas.

EAS radio announcements go out in the Bay Area for flooding (at least they are supposed to) I know we were careful to do it for Santa Clara county at KFJC

In southern California we get emergency alerts for fire and flood evacuation orders. They are legitimately useful, when an evacuation order happens you want to know asap.

Right. If the Amber Alerts had pictures with them, they might actually be useful.

There's no way I'm going to confront someone on the streets (or even call the cops) based solely on a vague text description like "8-year-old girl with brown hair wearing a tee shirt and jeans".

Hawaiians once received one of these alerts for "missile inbound" in error. [1] That may have had an impact on sensitivity to these alerts.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...

Marketers will hijack anything, even safety

In car radio, it's adding honking horns to the ads. Ringing phones... things that should just be left alone.

There's a special circle of Hell for marketers who use police sirens in radio ads.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com