The latest claim from Wisconsin Welfare Radio and TV is that cutting the number of field engineers from 12 to 6 will endanger the Amber Alert system. That’s funny; WJJA-TV (Channel 49 on your analog dial; I don’t remember what the digital signal is at) is able to operate with pretty much just a machine, and their analog and digital antennas are about 20 miles apart. Tell me again how, if Amber Alert were to be made as robust as the remainder of the Wisconsin EAS (which would actually save money because the fine folks at the state Emergency Operations Center would actually have something to do) and WTMJ-AM/WKTI-FM were involved in the primary loop, it would suffer if 6 people couldn’t do the job of perhaps 2 plus a machine?
Oh, and one more thing; no Wisconsin TV station, whether it be welfare or for-profit, has anything beyond a passive participatory role in either the main EAS or Amber Alert systems. Those are both radio-based.
