In article ,
"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" wrote:

fired this volley in news:8d0c8279-66a3-4b3c-9db1-
:

The good
news with the new digital stuff is that if you can get any sort of
signal strength, the picture is likely to be good, better in fringe
areas than with the old analog stuff. But it's either going to be
great or you aren't going to get it at all, no in-between fuzzy-ghosty
pic.

And there, Stan, is the crucial problem our emergency services planners
didn't think out well.

Not only is fringe area reception spotty, but rain and dust storms can
also interrupt it.

It used to be, you could rely upon a cheap battery-operated TV for
emergency information during major storms. Even a noisy, snowy picture
was (usually) useful for determining, say, storm tracks. Now, the
probability of that working has been reduced to almost zero.

You'd have thought that our far-sighted FCC and other planners of
emergency communications would have reserved ONE analog VHF station per
service area, just for that primary purpose. But no. Now we must rely
upon radio ONLY for crisis communications. That, or we can wait for the
sheriff's deputies to come along the streets with PAs blasting the news.

Hmmm... Town Criers! Who'd have thought we would have "planned"
ourselves back to that.


The FCC is run by lawyers. They did away with the engineers in
charge, a long time ago.

Umm. I worked for the FCC in the early 1970s, in The Office of The
Chief Engineer. The FCC was run by lawyers back then too. Nor could it
be otherwise for any regulatory agency, as whatever the Agency does the
loser always takes the agency to Federal Court. Plaintiffs are usually
billion-dollar companies, so they can afford to take it to the Supreme
Court, and always do.

Joe Gwinn