On Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will conduct a nationwide live test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) for the first time in the history of the EAS.This test should last between 30 seconds and 1 minute.
Listeners and viewers of these broadcast systems will not need to take any action because of this test.
By activating the EAS system for this test, all radio and TV broadcasts, including Cable TV and Satellite TV/Radio services, will be interrupted during the test period. The test will be accompanied by the same audio message across all media which will state that it is a test. Viewers of video services will see a message crawl that will give an indication that an Emergency Action Notification has been requested but it will not state that it is a test. This is an automatic feature of the type of live message code being used to initiate the system however viewers may see a background slide inserted by local broadcasters that will state that it is a test.
Due to technical message length restrictions NOAA Weather Radio will not carry this type of EAS message or test.
For more information regarding the EAS and this test, please go to: http://www.fema.gov/eastest/
Pr. Betinho