It’s that time of year again, and by that I don’t mean Kyle Schwarber’s annual June home run barrage or the snowbirds returning to Long Island and making the wait for a table at the restaurants down here manageable. No, June 1st means Hurricane Season, and along with the already (and horrifically so) tornado season, it reminds those of us in the news media to be prepared for emergencies.
You know that, I’ve preached it for years (thank you, Howard Price), and it should be obvious by now that whether you’re a broadcast radio or TV operation or an online media outlet, you should be ready for weather emergencies – alternate broadcast sites, system redundancy, generators, all-hands-on-deck work schedules, contacts with all the relevant agencies, all of that. If you don’t have all of that ready by now, you haven’t been paying attention. You should have it ready year-round. No excuses.
But weather isn’t the only emergency. What’s your plan if a major news event happens? And what qualifies as a news event major enough to break into programming or send out a bulletin or shift gears and drop everything else to cover it 24/7?
Take the Trump trial. Do you break into regular programming to cover the verdict? If you do, do you have reporters to handle the live coverage, or experts to explain what happened? Are you ready to cover the story in full, or with just a headline, or just posting on social? Someone has to make that call, and in this case, at least, you have the luxury to make that call before you need to implement the plan.
The emergency could be the death of a notable person. How notable would they have to be before you’d change your programming? For music stations, how big a star would merit changing your playlist on the fly to fill it up with that artist’s music? Do you have obituaries for major figures prepared in advance so that you’re not scrambling to write a suitable story when the news hits?
Remember, some figures transcend formats, some don’t, and some might fall in between; the passing of Bill Walton, for example, was undeniably a sports bulletin but his fame was wider than just basketball, and a rock station might drop a Grateful Dead tune into the hour to honor the band’s biggest (or tallest) fan.
The fact is, while we’ve pointed out how unprepared many broadcast stations are for things like hurricanes, and wildfires, and tornadoes, preparedness is also an issue for other news and programming.
Now is the time to get your experts and contacts lined up and your procedures in place – especially, who makes the call to treat a story as a bulletin, especially if the person normally responsible for making that decision isn’t in the building. Have your social media plans in place as well, and your email bulletin plans ready to go, and make sure everyone knows whose job it is to do each task. The last thing you want is for something to fall through the cracks because someone didn’t know that it was their job.
Of course, you also have to be prepared for those weather emergencies, and with things getting increasingly unpredictable, you need to prepare for anything to happen. Last year, hurricanes threatened the West Coast and tornadoes began to become more frequent here in South Florida. Wildfires are already active in Canada this year, and the power outage season has begun in Texas. Things that used to be mostly isolated to one region or another can happen anywhere.
While it’s safe to assume Miami doesn’t need to worry about blizzards, most other natural disasters – storms, earthquakes, floods, fire – are everywhere. Make sure your station can stay on the air throughout anything, and if your tower falls down and you don’t have an auxiliary antenna someplace else, stream and let people know about it through social media. Arrange the means to go on the air from your local or regional emergency center. You should know the drill by now. You should have a drill to know.
Be ready for anything. It’s why we do what we do.
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
