Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Emergency Alert System nationwide test

By now, you've probably seen public service announcments that the Emergency Alert System will be running a coordinated nationwide test at 2:00 PM ET (11:00 AM PT) today. Apparently, it's going to affect every channel in the country, including cable/satellite channels. TCM will be about 15 minutes into Politics at that time, so the movie may be interrupted for 60 seconds or so. Surprisingly, TCM doesn't seem to have anything up on its website about whether or not there will be an interruption.

When it comes to this sort of interruption, I can't help but think of the 1950 movie The Next Voice You Hear..., which is sadly unavailable on DVD. The premise is that at 8:30 PM every evening, the voice of God broadcasts on all the radio frequencies in the free world, and that this naturally has an effect on the people who hear the voice. The focus, of course, is on one stereotypically average American family, played by James Whitmore and Nancy Davis, with one young son and a second child on the way. It's scheduled for November 28 on TCM.

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