This is a test. For the next thirty seconds, this station will conduct a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.
I've made mention of the transmitter logs (see Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125), which the operator on duty had to sign and date before assuming responsibility for what was being broadcast. One of things everybody had to know who worked the control room was how to perform a weekly test of the Emergency Broadcast System, the EBS. Created in the mid-1960s and very much civil defense chic, the test was both a sense of honor (for DJs who were now the ones giddily interrupting someone else’s programming, much as the EBS has interrupted their television and radio programming growing up) and nuisance (as it took up precious time in their music shift).
At some point every week there was to be a test of the EBS equipment. In short, it simply meant you ran a recorded introduction, turned up one of the channels on the audio board that played the recognizable tones (at 853 Hz and 960 Hz), and then played the recorded concluding remarks. That was the test, in all its push-button simplicity.
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. The broadcasters of your area in voluntary cooperation with the FCC and federal, state, and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency.
It was beaten into our heads that we had to know this in the event someone from the FCC ever walked in and requested we run a test. Dr. Propel, on par with his usual goofiness, often would waltz by the studio window, wearing an old brown fedora with a tag in the brim that had the word "PRESS" scribbled out and replaced with the letters "FCC." While an obvious joke, it was to drive home the point that you had to know the test.
If this had been an actual emergency, the signal you just heard would have been followed by official news or information.
The Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), on the other hand, was a group of performance artists and musicians from Rhode Island that helped introduce the concept of video scratching. Here's how EBN's Brian Kane, Josh Pearson, and Gardner Post worked: take a clip off television news of someone announcing, "Emergency;" then of someone else saying, "Broadcast;" followed by "Network" said by someone else. Create some funky backbeat rhythm to go with that and you've got what EBN did best. There were a few other similar artists out there around this time, mixing and mashing together sounds with the latest in digital audio equipment. In the past, to create something akin to this you’d probably have a live band performing to an audiotape spliced together of lost-and-found sounds. EBN, and others, could simply record a sound into their computer and then cut, copy, and paste to their heart’s content. Add some visuals – on the fledging CD- ROM medium – and you’ve got a video, albeit not on par with what MTV plays (or played, as was the trend).
This station serves the local area. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System.
Of course, back at the station, by the time everybody had mastered the art of the weekly test of the 30-year-old EBS, the powers-that-be finally updated the concept, resulting in the Emergency Alert System (EAS). There was a difference, as well as mass education of everyone to know how to operate the EAS. It just didn't gel with some people....
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Electronic Behavior Control System
(EBN)
Emergency Broadcast Network
From the album Telecommunication Breakdown
1995
