|
|
Twenty years ago, Bill Baker
(left), then 28, received a surprise: his employer, MidAmerica Media, an Illinois-based radio station owner, decided to change its entire staff.
The young station program manager, suddenly found himself out of a job. Today, AM radio dials, nationwide, sound much different, due in part to
how Baker responded to that 1983 occurrence.*
Baker decided that instead of working for someone else he would try to turn an “avocation” into a “paying vocation.”
His daring paid off, as Information Station Specialists (ISS),
begun on a lowly kitchen table in Iowa, blossomed ever so slowly. The specialty? A niche communication solution: AM-band public broadcast radio stations for the burgeoning number of people “on the go” in cars.
The fledgling company in 1984 marketed its first “Information Station,” a 10-watt, AM-band radio station with a 3-5-mile-radius range. Since every car has an AM radio receiver, Information Stations became a simple, affordable way for agencies to reach the public on a familiar medium. National parks and departments of tourism, the first buyers, used the stations primarily to communicate visitor information. In fact, nearly every national park now has an ISS station.
In 1986 Baker moved his company to Michigan. Later, in the 1990s, highway departments with federal funding for “Intelligent Transportation Systems” began using Information Stations in conjunction with a mix of cameras and changeable message signs installed on freeways. To date, the company has installed more than a thousand stations in the US but even so remains lean with only six employees. And that’s just the way Baker likes it. “In the age of high tech, ironically, it is the ‘low-tech’ aspect of AM radio broadcasting that makes the product so popular,” he surmises. In contrast to newer computerized systems that require time to be designed and implemented, Highway Advisory Radio (as departments of transportation call the stations) was, according to Baker, “a technology already on the shelf. All we did was apply a little creativity to integrating, assembling and making it accessible.”
Information Station Specialists, located in small-town America (Zeeland, Michigan, population 6000), like its well-known neighbor (Fortune 500 office furniture manufacturer Herman Miller), has become adept at working big -- in all 50 states -- to garner enough business to survive. The company eventually was able to obtain the 65% national share it enjoys today in this niche market.
Like most companies, ISS developed a website (theRADIOsource.com in 1999) and expanded its product line (in 2001) to include “Emergency Advisory Radio Stations” that communities can use to talk to citizens in the event of any kind of emergency, natural or manmade. Just in time, it turns out, for the homeland-security focus following the World Trade Center incident. Dubbed “ALERT AM®,” the Emergency Advisory Radio product automatically broadcasts targeted National Weather Service warnings and national-level emergency messages (EAS) as well as locally-generated live or recorded messages, allowing community leaders to address citizens directly on conventional AM radio channels -- before, during and after an incident. When Hurricane Isabel hit, ALERT AM was “the subject of rave reviews throughout the event," according to Captain Jeff Doran of the Brigantine, New Jersey, Police Department. Don Williams, a talk-show host on Station 1400 WOND in nearby Pleasantville, lives in Brigantine and listened to the ALERT AM station himself. During his own broadcasts on the commercial station, he told people to tune to the Emergency Advisory Radio Station for hurricane information. Says Williams, "I feel the Brigantine Beach emergency advisory radio station was a great service to the community, keeping us up to date on the latest storm developments and what they meant to Brigantine. All the information was there. I believe it had a calming effect. No rumors. Just facts, repeated so you could tune in every now and then and know just what the conditions were and what was expected.”
Emergency Advisory Radio Stations take a variety of shapes, including individual stations with a range of 25-75 square miles, synchronized networks of stations to cover complete counties and portable stations that can be deployed to trouble spots as needed. The stations are used in conjunction with flashing signs that alert motorists to tune in. More than 200 Emergency Advisory Radio Stations already populate the map; and that number rises daily.
The ALERT AM product is popular because it survives the disaster. That is, it continues getting the word out despite power outages, using four days of battery backup power. And since most AM radio receivers operate on batteries, especially in vehicles, people can pick up the signal, even when power is down. This worked well in the recent blackout across the Northeast, according to Mike Crimmins
(right), broadcast services manager for the Sterling Heights, Michigan, Emergency Operations Center. “We used our radio station extensively during the 'Blackout of 2003.' …Even when the City phone system went off line, we were able to update the messages with the phone at the transmitter location.” Unlike proposed notification systems that depend upon high-tech solutions, the ALERT AM product is not PC-based and therefore not vulnerable to an Internet cyber-attack. But the biggest area of interest, according to Baker, is the fact that Emergency Advisory Radio allows public safety officials to speak directly with those they are charged to protect without the need to go through third parties, such as commercial radio/TV.
This positive response in the emergency-management market has caused ISS’ tiny group of employees to regularly crisscross the country to service clients. So Baker set up a network of strategically located representatives to visit customer sites to plan and install ISS systems.
The Federal Communications Commission allows local, state and federal governments to license Emergency Advisory Stations in the 530-1700 kHz frequency range. In some instances, industries, such as the HAZMAT firms Dow Chemical and the Hanford Nuclear Power Plant, collaborate with communities to fund stations in vulnerable areas. Other users, such as airports and universities, usually establish stations for security and parking purposes. Federal agencies who have stations include the CIA and several military bases (e.g., Fort Lewis, Washington; Ventura County Naval Base in California). International points of entry such as the Ambassador Bridge (at the US-Canada border), border crossings at Mexico and large bridges, such as the Mackinac Bridge (connecting upper and lower Michigan) operate ISS stations, also. |
|
 |
| * Baker credits Jeff Cantrill
with mentoring him in the early days. Cantrill answered
technical questions and conferred confidence that
initial efforts would produce. Cantrill had also been with
MidAmerican Media and had been chief engineer at WQUA in Moline,
Illinois. |
|
|
|
 |
|
