Emergency Broadcast Singing
The Emergency Broadcast System traditionally provides a relatively boring message of potential, yet not-yet-realized, threat that was pre-scripted by the FCC. Since the FCC did not allow stations to change the text of the message, one small radio station had to come up with another method of making the message interesting:
Stations had the option of either reading the test script live, or using recorded versions…. WHEN radio in Syracuse, New York had their own sung version. In the late 1970s, however, the FCC prohibited singing the test script or reading it as if it were a joke.
Here’s the singing version that WHEN used before the FCC prohibited, you know, fun. I’d like to hear a version of someone “reading it as if it were a joke.”
Song originally hosted on Conelrad.