3/2/2012Who’s REALLY Ahead of the Curve?Establish a Protocol for Breaking Weather NewsI’m forever baffled by the doomsayers who say terrestrial radio and TV are yesterday’s news. “Digital is where it’s at…online is how you stay ahead of the curve” these days in the media.Really?As I write this, an unusual – and unusually severe – tornadic weather pattern is marching across the southeast US. So of course, being ahead of the curve and all, you’d expect radio and TV websites to be all over it, right? Early warnings, what-to-dos, key phone numbers – all the stuff a listener might need to prepare and respond? Fuggeddaboudit.A troubling number of radio stations especially remain way late on the uptake when it comes to getting breaking weather news – or any news, really – onto their websites.Mind you, I am not advocating hare’em-scare’em bulletins into and out of every stopset. I am advocating legitimate public service – that also just happens to give folks a reminder that local broadcasters are the source to turn to when local conditions are threatening. I’m also advocating ways of keeping your audience from thinking you’re asleep at the switch.And remember, even if you are a music-intensive station, your listeners are likely to stay with you in many emergencies – because they’re comfortable with you and trust you to keep them informed.So how can you be proactive, reinforce your local “service” brand, and demonstrate that you are the “go-to” source for the information your community needs, when it needs it?Simple. You establish standing protocols, and you post them in every air studio and at every online workstation. You discuss them at the morning programming and news meetings. You exercise them off-the-air, just to make sure everyone knows their roles, and how to launch continuous live coverage that is comprehensive, controlled and credible.Some conversation starters:ADVISORIES & WATCHES:No need for alarm…but there is need at this stage for vigilance. Standing protocol should be red banners atop your home, news and weather web pages, and if your data feeds are not automated, a reworking of these pages to reflect the latest intelligence from the National Weather Service.If you subscribe to a weather forecasting service, spend a few extra bucks and expand the number of live reports. Perhaps make them ALL LIVE after watches are posted by the NWS.Get your production person to start assembling special sounders you can use for breaking news (if you don’t already have them), and get your promotions people to start cranking out “WHEN THE WEATHER IS AT ITS WORST, WE’RE AT OUR BEST” – type promos you can use to remind your listeners to stay with your station.Give ‘em substance right out of the box. If you don’t have it already, assemble a disaster preparedness page with key local phone numbers (and e-mail/text addresses if they exist) for critical response services and government agencies. Cut and paste preparedness guidance from FEMA and the Red Cross and your local and regional emergency management agencies. And on the air – lead the way. At your top of the hour/bottom of the hour breaks, and at the quarter-hours (at least), do a situational reset:“It’s One O’clock at 101.1FM/WXXF, 1450/WXXA and WXXFWWXXA.com – where East Yahupputz turns for weather. And we want to remind you that the National Weather Service has posted a tornado watch for our area…saying there is a high likelihood of dangerous storms through nightfall. Know what do and where to go – visit WXXX.com now, and click on our disaster preparedness page, sponsored by Bill’s TrueValue Hardware. And stay with WXXX throughout the day and night…we’ll be your light in the storm.”Did you see what I snuck in there – a billboard for a storm coverage sponsor. You can – and should – make money to pay for all the public service. And listeners will remember sponsors that help keep them safe.WARNINGS:Now you pull out all the stops. For tornadoes, floods and hurricanes – blizzards, too – you break format and go wall-to-wall, invoking your continuous coverage plan. And stop running commercials.If you’re a daytimer or normally power down after sunset, put in a call to your local FCC engineer-in-charge, and request instant special authority to remain at full power and optimal pattern for the duration of the weather emergency and any aftermath. (You can do that, you know.)Completely reset your website home, news and weather pages and replace the usual content and advertising with storm-related information.Start getting local emergency response officials on the phone and on the air, and make sure you engage your listeners as storm spotters and citizen-journalists.Repeat your e-mail and text addresses often, along with your studio line.Push the online resources, and make sure they always live up to the audience’s expectations. In the age of Twitter, any station that thinks its website is purely a static marketing tool – something separate and apart from its air product – is engaging in folly. At the first signs of trouble, make sure you’re in a state of readiness as well. Check the generators, verify your key contact information, warn the staff they may need to hunker down for a while – and be sure to have the supplies you need on hand to sustain yourself for 72 hours.Now…before bad things happen…is the time to plan – to have the strategy and resources in place -- to use every weapon in your information arsenal to serve your audience in times of crisis.Editor’s note: Howard Price is the director of business continuity and crisis management at ABC News, and an award-winning broadcast journalist. Visit his website, MediaDisasterPrep.com, for more helpful contingency planning guidance, and follow him on Twitter (@mediadisaster) and on Facebook (search for the MediaDisasterPrep.com page). Howard’s e-mail address is Howard.B.Price@abc.com. The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author, and are not necessarily those of his employer.2/15/2012Standing Up for Truth – And the Courage to Report ItI usually write in this space about emergency preparedness, exhorting broadcasters to bulk up their readiness for crisis, whatever form it may take.But I’m writing now in defense of my colleague, our colleague, WUSA’s Andrea McCarren, whose bold reporting on the scourge of underage drinking in and around the District of Columbia should have every thinking parent – and every thinking teenager – scared out of their minds.And perhaps especially so now, as the world mourns Whitney Houston’s death – a premature death that followed a life wracked by addictions that sucked away her youth and her enormous talent.Andrea and her team shone a bright spotlight on the ease with which underage teens could buy and use alcohol in a series of eye-opening reports, some of which involved undercover reporting techniques.Her reward for trying to expose the under-enforcement of laws governing the sale of alcohol to minors – and the ease and frequency of use among underage teens – was to be publicly attacked by teens and adults alike.Even her children became targets of harassment.That’s when she handed off her reporting to a WUSA anchor, hoping the heat would die down, cooler, more rational heads would prevail – and her kids would be left alone.Full disclosure. My wife worked with Andrea at crosstown WJLA years ago, and I had the opportunity to work with Andrea during her time at ABC News. She is a cheerful and caring person – engaging, and engaged in the issues that matter, or should, to viewers. And she’s a terrific reporter.The comments and criticisms thrown at her in the wake of her reporting are vitriolic, vindictive, hateful, threatening, and downright illogical, insane and incomprehensible.Memo to the audience: This woman is trying to save your kids. Trying to spare you the anguish too many parents have known after the phone rings in the middle of the night, with police at the other end saying your kids have been arrested, or assaulted, or injured, or killed in an alcohol- or drug-related incident. Trying to retrieve a generation falling backward, toward the temptations of easy booze and drugs. Trying to get public officials to get off their soapboxes, out of their ivory towers, away from their speechifying, and into action to stop this madness.And what do you do? You attack the messenger. Here’s an idea: Instead of opening your blissfully ignorant mouths at Andrea, why don’t you redirect your choice words at your kids? Why don’t you actually parent for a change, instead of trying to out-hip, out-cool and out-tweet them?And here’s a memo for the RTDNA – the organization that stands up for bold broadcast and digital reporting. And the SPJ, which stands up for bold journalism of all stripes. Where are you in all this?Here’s a memo for the politicians in DC and beyond: Where are you? Why aren’t you giving Andrea McCarren the key to the city? I’d guess it’s because she’s reporting on your own general failure to enforce underage drinking regulations in your jurisdictions. For letting a TV station do the stings your own police and alcohol regulators should be carrying out. For making you look bad and ineffective.Let every news director take note. Today, it’s all about reporting that matters, that makes a difference, that brings positive change. It’s going on at TV and radio stations all across the land. But it is under threat. Seize this moment as an industry to stand with Andrea and say WE’RE mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore. And support reporting, at whatever cost, that in the end saves lives.Editor’s note: Howard Price is the director of business continuity and crisis management at ABC News, and an award-winning broadcast journalist. Visit his website, MediaDisasterPrep.com, for more helpful contingency planning guidance, and follow him on Twitter (@mediadisaster) and on Facebook (search for the MediaDisasterPrep.com page). Howard’s e-mail address is Howard.B.Price@abc.com. The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author, and are not necessarily those of his employer.11/9/2011“IF This Was an Actual Emergency?”It IS an Actual Emergency!”American broadcasters are gearing up for the first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System. But we’ve got a real emergency on our hands well in advance of the test.I mean, have you actually read, seen or heard the PSAs being distributed to broadcasters to inform listeners about this exercise? They’re abominable. They’ll go in one ear and out the other – more background noise between music or chatter or commercials. Or be consigned to the low-listenership dayparts. Or not aired at all.And that’s a damned shame. Especially given the huge amount of great available talent, any of whom could have been tasked to create an in-your-face EAS awareness campaign, like this historic gem, which actually aired for a time on WHEN/Syracuse.Mind you, I am advocate for emergency alerting systems like EAS. Butlet’s be honest: EAS is a system that has cost broadcasters millions of dollars collectively, has never been used nationally, and is not used as often – or as well -- as it should be regionally and locally. Most folks know only this about EAS: it’s that thing with the annoying digital tones that plays just before a commercial or a promo or “much more music,” and is never followed by a really good explanation of how it does what it does, and why we should care.And it’s fair to say that what people DO know about EAS, and its EBS predecessor, is not altogether positive. Remember the terrifying 1971 EAN misfire (captured for eternity by WOWO/Ft Wayne, IN)? Or this mistake that scared Chicago in June 2007? Or more dramatically, the Minot, ND train derailment of January 2002?To this day, the we-say/they-say debate over what really happened in Minot goes on. This much is not in dispute: A freight train derailed near Minot, spewing a toxic cloud of anhydrous ammonia. And no warnings were broadcast by any of the nine signals licensed to Minot.Local officials say they were unable to reach anyone at the designated EAS station for Minot, and also were unable to fire an EAS program interrupt.Authorities blamed the station; the station blamed a technical issue over which it had no control -- and operational ineptitude on the part authorities. And at the end of the day, one person was dead; a thousand more were hurt.And we think a federal-level test of EAS will prevent snafus like this from happening again?A hazmat spill, a massive tornado, a raging flood, mudslide or wildfire that impacts local communities is more likely, day to day, than a national crisis. THAT’S where EAS needs to be exercised more frequently, and local officials need to know “cold:” how to make it work. They’re not part of the national test, and they’re not routinely part of any local tests, either.Beyond EAS itself, broadcasters must back the system up with the internal horses they need to keep a steady stream of reliable, useful information flowing to listeners and viewers during and after an incident. What’s more, stations MUST have plans to deal with the threats THEY’D confront in any catastrophe – to assure operational continuity. At minimum. that means at least one human – on site, all the time -- who knows what buttons to push and what phone calls to make.So all hail the national EAS test. And let’s put some of our great local talent to work generating PSAs that are meaningful and informative – that engage listeners so they appreciate the importance of EAS. It is critically important that they understand those digital chirps signal a need to listen up for vital information that could save their lives and property.If we as broadcasters fail to act proactively where EAS is concerned – fail to engage local officials in real exercises, and fail to impart a real understanding of the importance of EAS to our viewers and listeners, we will have only ourselves to blame when – not if – a Minot happens again.Editor’s note: Howard Price is the director of business continuity and crisis management at ABC News, and an award-winning broadcast journalist. Visit his website, MediaDisasterPrep.com, for more helpful contingency planning guidance, and follow him on Twitter (@mediadisaster) and on Facebook (search for the MediaDisasterPrep.com page). Howard’s e-mail address is Howard.B.Price@abc.com. The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author, and are not necessarily those of his employer.10/31/2011Why No Live Storm Coverage? Answer: “We Can’t Afford it!”This weekend, I wasn’t one in a million. I was one in about THREE MILLION…three million Northeasterners plunged into darkness in the wake of our Snowtober storm that dumped in excess of a foot of snow in some places, and went through trees and power lines in nearly all places with the ferocity of a buzzsaw.A perfect opportunity for radio to shine, right? Maybe not so much. To wit, some freeform riffing from the longtime morning man on the only English-speaking radio station licensed to our county. He was responding to an irate caller who wondered, live on the air, why – during the height of this weekend’s intense storm – there was no live news coverage on the aforementioned radio station.The longtime morning man’s response – live on the air? “Well, we can’t afford it.” Seriously. He told his listeners the station couldn’t afford wall-to-wall coverage of the storm on a weekend.(He went onto say that there was a staffer at the station to take recorded -- read that, unchallenged -- statements from local officials about what they were doing to address storm impacts.)Hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute. To steal a phrase from one of my favorite radio pundits, Dave Ross: Let’s read that real slow.Live news coverage during a raging pre-winter storm that has blacked out a quarter of the county and blocked hundreds of streets and roads? We. Can’t. Afford. It?Think about the absurdity (albeit honest absurdity) of that statement, while I give you a quick history lesson.This radio station has a signal pattern that resembles an inkblot test. It’s a high-dial, highly directional low-power AM station that can’t even cover its entire county of license. It’s certainly fraught with challenges, technical and economic – all of which were well known when its current owner, a physician with no previous broadcast experience, bought the station some years ago to fulfill a dream of radio ownership. Bought it, mind you, for a published sum from which most seasoned operators probably would have walked away, given the station’s issues.But I digress.At that time, this first-time owner told a local newspaper that he’d learned all about running radio stations from numerous “conversations” with another local operator (who years earlier, owned the “other,” much more robust station licensed to the county – renowned for its live, local programming).The doctor’s station, which bills itself as our county’s “Hometown Radio Station,” runs mostly on automation, and aside from its all-live local morning show and some specialty programs, it brokers much of its time to local businesspeople who buy a half-hour or an hour to sell their goods or services, in what amounts to extended infomercials.Bad signal. Bad economy. Revenue-based programming decisions. We get all that. But for God’s sake, your community of license is facing what has been called one of the worst storms in its history, and you don’t break format, don’t staff up, don’t prepare in any meaningful way because “we can’t afford it?” And you say so ON THE AIR?!Here’s the lesson you apparently missed in all your “conversations” with that other (very successful, very community-focused) owner, Doc. You are licensed to serve your community’s public interest, convenience and necessity. Its interest and necessity this weekend – and today, and until every last home has heat and light – is to hold accountable the elected bloviators and the utility bigwigs who were also caught flat-footed, despite days of forecasts which all said this was going to be an historic pre-season winter storm.The folks with no power – me included, who live in a hilly county where even those with a battery-powered TV don’t get digital TV without cable – relied on you to fight for them. To guide them, to help them. To calm and comfort them. To amplify their voice. To get their problems fixed. To relieve their angst.Meaningfully, you did none of that. And you were all they had. Because what worked when nothing else did were battery-powered radios. And YOU, sir, were the only radio game in town, literally. While I am sorry for and sympathetic to your financial and technical troubles – you knew what you were buying (or should have) before you bought it. You should have had a good-times/bad-times business plan, and the means necessary to run the business properly, if you were unable to mitigate any of your obstacles.But whatever you did or didn’t do, you ALWAYS should have put the needs of your listeners first.I have said in this space before – and will say again and again until the day I die – this is the only real reason why local radio need exist anymore: to provide critical and timely news and information to its listening area, especially in emergencies. So if I might write a prescription to the good doctor who owns our local radio station, I’d tell him:1)Read my suggestions for station emergency preparedness in Valerie Geller’s excellent new tome, “Beyond Powerful Radio,” and call me in the morning;2)Visit my website, www.MediaDisasterPrep.com, for more good ideas (including ways of actually generating revenue from crisis programming and community service;and3)Spring for some OT for your newspeople – or invite some top-notch student journalists in for internship credit – stat. Cover crisis well, and sell the hell out of it later. You will make money – AND make your station, however challenged, the go-to information destination for local listeners.“Can’t afford” crisis coverage – any day, any time? Allow me to posit the notion you can’t afford NOT to provide it.Editor’s note: Howard Price is the director of business continuity and crisis management at ABC News, and an award-winning broadcast journalist. Visit his website, MediaDisasterPrep.com, for more helpful contingency planning guidance, and follow him on Twitter (@mediadisaster) and on Facebook (search for the MediaDisasterPrep.com page). Howard’s e-mail address is Howard.B.Price@abc.com. The opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author, and are not necessarily those of his employer.
© Tom Petner 2012
Howard B. Price Comments
Howard B. Price
HOWARD B. PRICE, CBCP, MBCI
Howard is the director of business continuity
and crisis management at ABC News in New
York. A 35-year veteran of radio, television and
newspapers, he is a two-time EMMY Award
winner, and a recipient of The George Foster
Peabody Award. He has worked domestically
and internationally as a news producer,
assignment editor, bureau chief, reporter and
anchor, covering some of the biggest stories of
our time, including the 9/11 attacks and the
2003 Northeast blackout.
A certified business continuity professional
(CBCP), Howard is charged with maintaining
operational resilience at all ABC News
platforms. He also serves as an in-house
consultant to the ABC Owned Television Station
Group. Howard holds a bachelor’s degree in
journalism from Northwestern University, and
an MBA in management and marketing from
New York University.
He has been a featured speaker at numerous
professional conferences and workshops, a
guest lecturer at MIT, and is a member of the
Disaster Recovery Institute International (DRII),
the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), the
Association of Contingency Planners (ACP),
the Contingency Planning Exchange (CPE), the
NorthEast Disaster Recovery Information
Exchange (NEDRIX), the Radio Television
Digital News Association (RTDNA) and the
National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences
(NATAS).
Howard is the founder of the website,
MediaDisasterPrep.com, and writes its
companion blog,
MediaDisasterPrep.wordpress.com. A married
father of two, and a resident of New City, NY,
Howard is fond of telling anyone who’ll listen
that events are disasters only if you haven’t
planned for them. His e-mail address is
Howard.B.Price@abc.com.
Reach him also on Twitter (@HBPrice and
@mediadisaster) and on Facebook.
Feeding the 24/7 News Cycle
