According to the NYT write up, the FCC says it has had little reason to enforce its 1994 policy which forbids fraudulent use of the EAS signal but "...for reasons that the commission said it had not determined, complaints have spiked recently, leading to at least four enforcement actions."
That hints at the real story. Why would people complain to the FCC because a commercial or movie trailer used EAS warning tones? Why would anyone care?
I remember when we would ignore those beeps. They would hardly register and most people wouldn't look up from making a sandwich if they heard the warning from the TV in the next room. In fact, I'd be annoyed whenever a TV station would test the EAS system because it upset my viewing regimen. The start of that announcement -- "This is a test..." -- would pretty much piss me off. I'd be counting seconds till the regularly scheduled show would resume, idiotic though it may have been (both the show and the counting).
So, why the sudden uptick in complaints? Why, after twenty years of it being illegal to use EAS-type audibles in a trivial fashion have people recently begun to demand the FCC to do something about such usage? Employing a bit of logic, that would have to be due to the fact we care more than we used to, because the EAS announcement means something to us. And, why would that be, now, when it used to make us giggle, used to come off as an odd throwback to Cold War paranoia? Because, these days, we live in renewed fear of attack -- a situation we haven't had to deal with since the 50s or 60s when tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union ran high and the possibility of a nuclear strike frightened us so much we trained our children to "Duck and Cover!" and ran drills where we hid under ours desks and shielded our eyes from the blinding light.
It may be reading between the lines but it seems obvious. Americans feel the next bombing or other use of deadly force in a politically motivated strike is imminent. Day to day we're on edge, perhaps a bit frayed, and don't much appreciate utilizing a system that is meant to inform us something terrible has happened, or could happen, in order to sell tickets to a movie.
This bit from the NYT story puts a fairly fine point on it:
"Around here in Southwest Missouri we are always on high alert for E.A.S. tones due to tornadoes," said one complaint the commission received, referring to the Emergency Alert System. The fake signal "had our entire family running to the TV to find out what was going on," the complaint said — and sounded real enough "that one of my children started to quickly get out of the bathtub thinking there was an emergency."
While that warning on TV used to mean as much as a car alarm going off up the block and we would respond accordingly if, that is, we even noticed the test had begun, now, when we hear those tones we dread very real possibilities. Yes, times have changed and, unfortunately, this is not a test.
