In the past, when a government agency felt it needed to communicate with me via my television, it ran a “crawler” across the bottom of my screen. While annoying, it was not overly intrusive. The recent change to this mechanism is unacceptable.
Recently, this mechanism has changed. FedGov now takes over my TV receiver entirely. This includes my TV and my TiVo Digital Video Recorder (DVR). This escalation goes way beyond annoying.
Now, when I am watching a recording on my DVR and the national Weather Service decides I need to be warned about something, my DVR is taken out of playback mode and FedGov’s own screen replaces the movie or other content I had been watching. This is accompanied by a too-loud, piercing siren sound — because, apparently, I won’t have noticed that my movie just went bye-bye — and then an audio message accompanies the written message on the screen.
My DVR controls become disabled — I assume that the FCC has mandated inclusion of circuitry in my receiver that allows FedGov to take over my TV at will — and I am, even after viewing this intrusive message, unable to return to what I was watching until FedGov is ready to return control of my receiver to me.
This is unacceptable. Totally, completely unacceptable.
It is one thing to mandate inclusion of a V-chip in receivers; I can choose not to use it if it is not applicable to my situation. This new alerting mechanism allows me no choice. That’s just wrong.
I am opposed, in principle, to FedGov ever taking control of my TV or DVR without my consent. It’s just wrong and this recent escalation goes too far. There is, and can be no justification for this.
There is zero (0) chance that a flash flood will sweep through my family room while the wife and I are watching the big screen. None. Zero.
At the same time, it is highly unlikely that families encamped in a flash flood area are watching television.
I don’t care if a nuclear war breaks out — FedGov should not intrude into my home in this manner without my consent. Period.
I’ve talked to the cable company and they told me that the FCC requires that these messages be passed through to all viewers. There is no way to avoid them. This is wrong. Shame on FedGov and the FCC.
Now, if FedGov feels like making these advisories available, that’s fine, but employ a mechanism that allows people who are interested to subscribe to these alerts. Do not force them on all viewers. Were I a more outdoorsy type, I might subscribe but, as is, I have no use for any of these advisories and cannot recall ever having changed my behavior based on having received such a notice.
In point of fact, I have a weather band radio and, on the rare occasion that I need to consider the forecast in my plans, I get it straight from the National Weather Service. I don’t want or need these intrusions into my activities at home.
If I lived in tornado alley, I’d definitely subscribe to these alerts. But many people simply do not need them and they serve only to annoy and remind us of how very intrusive government has become.
As is, these notices are like spam email that cannot be filtered out.
Thrice Annoyed
While watching a recording this afternoon, it was interrupted by a live weather advisory for a county hundreds of miles away (living remotely as we do, we get cable TV from Phoenix — several hundred miles away), I noted that my DVR was also recording two shows at the time. This means I will, at a minimum, be “warned” about this same condition twice more when I watch each of the recordings that were interrupted by the alert. This for a condition that did not apply to me even when it was current! Too much. Too far. Unacceptable!
My wife and I are retired. We don’t get out much. TV is our primary recreation and FedGov has taken it upon itself to ruin this experience for us. Watching a movie this afternoon, I found that it included a weather advisory from the day it was recorded last week and when the advisory was ended and the movie was once again playing, pandemonium had broken out in the movie plot. I had no idea what I missed due to the unwanted and unwarranted intrusion but it was crucial to the plot and I missed it. Shame on FedGov.
In summary, this new, more intrusive alert mechanism — taking control of my receiver — is unacceptable. Fix it. At minimum. provide a mechanism to allow viewers to disable these interruptions. Until that mechanism is in place, return to the old “crawler” across the bottom of the screen method of alerting. This new mechanism is unacceptable.