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WSB - Severe Weather Sound

R

RadioDoogie

Why does WSB 95.5 always play this strange sound in the background everytime there is severe weather in the area? It plays over the existing broadcast. Is this some kind of indicator or encoding? It’s been doing that for many years.
 
I remember in 1969 when I was just starting in radio, we had EBS. You had to cut the carrier on and off a couple of times then play a cart that had 1 Khz tone and read the test message. The difficult part at that time WDBL had an FM (94.3) and the AM 1590 in a simulcast. The AM transmitter was in the next room with plenty of glass for a good view of the Collins transmitter and it's glowing tubes. The FM was in an adjacent built on room to the AM and out of sight of the studio. There was no "remote" control in the studio for either transmitters. For an EBS test you had to get someone to flip the plate switch on one of the transmitters the same time you did.

I was there on Saturday afternoon when we got a really serious thunderstorm with 60 plus MPH winds.Just as I got the warning off the AP machine the power went out so I didn't have worry about the tone or cutting the carrier on both transmitters. WDBL did not have a back up generator. The station was nice enough to pay me for the full shift.
 
When I lived in Kansas City pre-1970, one of the AM stations with a huge signal did an extensive marketing campaign to promote a tone or beep that would play over all programming (music, commercials, jock, etc). They said you were never 2 minutes away from knowing if there is severe weather and that full details will coming shortly. My school played it in severe weather and my parents tuned to the station whenever bad weather was rolling in.
 
RadioDoogie said:
Why does WSB 95.5 always play this strange sound in the background everytime there is severe weather in the area? It plays over the existing broadcast. Is this some kind of indicator or encoding? It’s been doing that for many years.
Click to expand...
All the Cox stations do this, or at least their news-talkers. I've heard this on WDBO and one of their stations out of Tulsa.
 
RadioDoogie said:
Why does WSB 95.5 always play this strange sound in the background everytime there is severe weather in the area? It plays over the existing broadcast. Is this some kind of indicator or encoding? It’s been doing that for many years.
Click to expand...
They used to run a promo during the spring and summer saying something to the effect of: if you hear that sound it means there's a severe weather warning in effect somewhere in the listening area -- and that a weather update was just a couple of minutes away -- so keep listening.
 
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