Nashville Radio: Will Bobby Bones Be Fined Or Suspended?

Bobby Bones

The broadcast technical community is chattering about Friday’s incident in which a nationally syndicated radio show inadvertently transmitted audio tones and triggered an Emergency Alert Notification message that was shared with radio and television audiences across parts of the United States.

The glitch occurred during the airing of the “Bobby Bones Show,” which originates from the studios of WSIX-FM in Nashville, Tenn., and is syndicated by Premiere Networks, part of iHeartMedia. The morning show is heard on some 100 radio stations.

The transmitted EAN tones were contained in the audio of a YouTube video from 2011 aired during the show.

Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates Bones, released this statement on Monday: "The tone should not have aired. We are cooperating fully with the authorities and are taking aggressive action to investigate this incident and prevent it from recurring. We deeply regret the error." There is also no word of any suspensions as of yet as a result of the tones being aired.

Members of the alerting community have been discussing it on listservs such as the EAS group maintained by the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

“It’s a big mess,” Gary Kline, senior vice president of engineering and Broadcast IT for Cumulus Media, told RadioWorld. Beyond the immediate concern over a false alert, he said, is the problem that this could happen at all. “That a station—not the president or his designee—could trigger an EAN alert. Scary stuff. I know there are a lot of people working hard to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.” -