Emergency Broadcast System
The Emergency Broadcast System, sometimes called the Emergency Action Notification System, was an emergency warning system used in the United States. It was the most commonly used, along with the Emergency Override system. It replaced the previous CONELRAD system and was used from 1963 to 1997, at which point it was replaced by the Emergency Alert System.
Purpose
The system was established to provide the president of the United States with an expeditious method of communicating with the American public in the event of war, threat of war, or grave national crisis. It was modeled after Civ-Alert, an emergency warning system in Hawaii. The Emergency Broadcast System replaced CONELRAD on August 5, 1963. In later years, it was expanded for use during peacetime emergencies at the state and local levels.Although the system was never used for a national emergency, it was activated more than 20,000 times between 1976 and 1996 to broadcast civil emergency messages and warnings of severe weather hazards.
National level EBS
An order to activate the EBS at the national level would have originated with the president and been relayed via the White House Communications Agency duty officer to one of two origination points – either the Aerospace Defense Command or the Federal Preparedness Agency – as the system stood in 1978. Participating telecommunications common carriers, radio and television networks, the Associated Press, and United Press International would receive and authenticate an Emergency Action Notification via a teletypewriter network designed specifically for this purpose. These recipients would relay the EAN to their subscribers and affiliates.Enemy attack or nuclear attack warning procedures under EBS changed with time. In 2024, the United States National Archives made available prerecorded messages dating to 1972 that were intended to be played during a national activation of the Emergency Broadcast System. A presidential EBS activation message without attack warning appears at 1:05:55 on side 2 of prerecorded tape number 027:
"The United States Emergency Broadcast System has been activated by direction of the President of the United States because of a grave national emergency. The Emergency Broadcast System comprises all communications facilities designated and authorized by the Federal Communications Commission to operate during a period of national emergency."
This "grave national emergency" message recording and script above was not in use by individual stations or published in any known FCC document.
The release of the EAN by the Aerospace Defense Command or the Federal Preparedness Agency would initiate a process by which the common carriers would link otherwise independent networks such as ABC, CBS, and NBC into a single national network from which even independent stations could receive programming. "Broadcast stations would have used the 2-tone Attention Signal on their assigned broadcast frequency to alert other broadcast stations to stand by for a message from the president." The transmission of programming on a broadcast station's assigned frequency, and the fact that television networks/stations and FM radio stations could participate, distinguished EBS from CONELRAD. EBS radio stations would not necessarily transmit on 640 or 1240 on the AM dial, and FM radio and television would carry the same audio program as AM radio stations did.
Activation procedure
Actual activations originated with a primary station known as a Common Program Control Station, which would transmit the. The Attention Signal most commonly associated with the system was a combination of the sine waves of 853 and 960 Hzsuited to attract attention due to its unpleasantness. Decoders at relay stations would sound an alarm, alerting station personnel to the incoming message. Then, each relay station would broadcast the alert tone and rebroadcast the emergency message from the primary station. The Attention Signal was developed in the mid-1960s.A nationwide activation of the EBS was called an Emergency Action Notification and was the only activation that stations were not allowed to ignore; the Federal Communications Commission made local civil emergencies and weather advisories optional.
To activate the EAN protocol, the Associated Press and United Press International wire services would notify stations with a special message. It began with a full line of X's, and a bell inside the Teletype machine would sound ten times. To avoid abuse and mistakes, the message included a confirmation password which changed daily. Stations that subscribed to one of the wire services were not required to activate the EBS if the activation message did not have proper confirmation.
False alarm of 1971
A properly authenticated Emergency Action Notification was incorrectly sent to United States broadcast stations at 9:33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on February 20, 1971.At the usual time a weekly EAN test was performed, teletype operator W.S. Eberhart had three tapes in front of him: a test tape, and two tapes indicating a real emergency, instructing the use of EAN Message #1, and #2, respectively. He inadvertently used the wrong tape, which used an unexpected codeword, "HATEFULNESS". The message ordered stations to cease regular programming immediately and begin an Emergency Action Notification using Message #1. Message 1 stated that regular programming had been interrupted at the request of the United States government but was not specific about the cause. A cancellation message was sent at 9:59 a.m. EST, but it used the same codeword as the original message. A cancellation message with the correct codeword was not sent until 10:13 a.m. EST. After 40 minutes and six incorrect or improperly formatted cancellation messages, the accidental activation was officially terminated.
This false alarm demonstrated major flaws in the practical implementation of an EAN. Many stations didn't receive the alert but more importantly, those that did either ignored it, canceled the EAN prematurely with or without any coded indication that the alert was erroneous, or didn't have EAN procedure documents readily accessible to them, so they had no indication of what to do. It is estimated that only 20% of the stations that received the activation followed the procedures completely. Several stations went off the air, as they were instructed to do. Recordings from stations that did not include one from WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for which a recording of the EAN activation exists.
This false alarm was sufficiently disruptive to move the FCC to temporarily suspend the use and testing of Emergency Action Notifications by codeword effective February 25, 1971. In the meantime, a national EBS activation would be routed through news service broadcast desks, then authenticated with the White House communications center, introducing a delay of approximately one minute. Numerous investigations were launched and several changes were made to the EBS. Among them, EAN Message #2, which contains specific language indicating an imminent attack, was eliminated. Another change was moving the tapes for genuine alerts away from the broadcasting machines to prevent them from being mistaken for the weekly test tapes. After numerous safeguards were put in place, the FCC voted to resume automatic national activation of the EBS using EANs in mid-December 1972, almost 20 months after they were suspended.
A United States Emergency Broadcast System prerecorded announcement for presidential EBS activation without attack warning did exist, and it could have been distributed from national activation points to radio and TV stations. No such distribution occurred in the 1971 incident, underscoring its falsity.
Following the 1971 incident, FCC publications ultimately removed Message 2 attack warning functions from EBS. FEMA nevertheless confidentially retained EBS attack warning capabilities into the Reagan presidency. Adding somewhat to the confusion, the confidential plan called for distributing prerecorded warning messages through Priority Four channels; in other words, not via any of the published FCC plans cited elsewhere here.
Citations to this confidential plan presently remain limited to a 1981 Reagan White House memo and the actual recorded attack warning announcement itself.
System uses
Though it was never used, the FCC's EBS plan involved detailed procedures for stations to follow during an EAN. It included precise scripts that announcers were to read at the outset of the emergency, as well as whenever detailed information was scarce. Among other things, citizens were instructed not to use the telephone, but rather continue listening to broadcast stations for information."The Emergency Broadcast System will carry presidential messages from the National Command Post as they are broadcast. Locally programmed broadcasts from the Emergency Broadcast System will provide you with news of the situation and emergency instructions for your area."
As late as 1981, the Emergency Broadcast System was capable of carrying messages pertaining to both immediate threats of nuclear attack and messages from the President of the United States. In the event of a national emergency, the White House Press Secretary would be expected to report to the FEMA Special Facility at Mount Weather and order the playing of prerecorded messages. These tapes contained scripted attack warnings, recorded siren sounds and other emergency information for use in the event of nuclear war.
As official information began to emerge from various sources, non-primary stations were to broadcast it according to the following priority list:
- Messages from the president of the United States
- Statewide emergency information
- Local emergency information
- National programming and news
Participation in EAN emergency broadcasting was done with the "voluntary cooperation" of each station. Stations that were not prepared to be part of the national EBS network were classified as "non-participating" by the FCC. During an EAN, a non-participating station was required to advise listeners/viewers to tune elsewhere to find emergency bulletins. The station's transmitter would then be turned off. Non-participating stations had to remain off the air until the EAN was terminated. Under no circumstances could any broadcast station continue with normal programming during a national emergency.
"All stations not authorized to remain on the air as part of the United States Emergency Broadcast System have been instructed to go off the air."
Since FCC rules prohibited unofficial or non-governmental news, information, or entertainment programming during EBS operations, the federal government established a newsroom at Mount Weather. President Gerald Ford's White House Press Secretary, Ron Nessen, confirmed the existence of the news center in his book: "I was shown the president's office and living quarters, my office, and facilities for a small number of reporters who would be evacuated with the president."