Monday, December 29, 2008

Community Needs an Alternative to KSSK; Hawaii Public Radio Could Grow into Role

Let’s shift the focus to how emergency broadcasting can be improved and away from KSSK‘s marginal performance during Friday night’s island-wide power outage. Clear Channel’s apparent “entertainment first” philosophy – even during emergencies – poorly serves the public, as many are concluding. (See “comments” beneath stories in the daily papers and in Comments added to our Saturday and Sunday posts, below.)

Update: Today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial also criticizes KSSK for its performance during the outage.

Would the public be better served if Hawaii Public Radio enjoyed that official status, too? We think so. HPR’s two stations – KHPR and KIPO, both FM stations – already are the state’s undisputed leaders in public affairs programming. Stepping up to emergency broadcaster status seems only logical.

First Things First

HPR’s leadership already has done a fine job upgrading its capabilities, including the recent increase in KIPO’s transmitting power. But the job is far from done; both stations were off the air Friday night, so getting to emergency broadcaster status will take a lot more work. Emergency stations have to stay on the air during emergencies!

General Manager Michael Titterton told a Hawaii Media Council audience last year that “some things just have to be done” to ensure HPR’s stations can operate in a power outage. So as a community, we could get behind HPR to help them achieve that critical first step and then move on to emergency broadcaster status.

News Orientation Needed

KSSK’s emergency coverage doesn’t come close to “journalism.” HPR is all about news and fact-finding, and you have to believe its on-air reporters would have been probing for information on how the outage was affecting critical communities and seeking answers about what (obviously) failed on HECO’s system for the entire island to go dark. As it was, KSSK’s team virtually attacked callers who asked questions of their own. (“Don’t you understand, sir? This is an ISLAND! We’re not connected to a bigger grid! Maybe you should just go back to Ohio….” and so on.)

Another consideration: HPR’s stations are commercial-free, so there’d be no temptation or motivation for the public station to provide kid-glove treatment to a company experiencing a crisis (utilities included) if that company is an advertiser.

We haven’t had time to check into whether some kind of financial subsidy is available to emergency broadcast outlets, but it’s worth looking into to assist HPR with upgrades to its facilities.

Anybody out there feel the same as we do here at CHORE? Feel free to add your comment below; you can be “anonymous” or sign your name.

It's about time for the public interest to come first in emergency broadcasting.

12/30 Update continued: The editorial notes that Mayor Hannemann was the first to tell the public the outage would last 12 hours.  You have to wonder why HECO didn't go public with that information itself.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

‘Masters of Disaster' Seem Pleased with Their Performance Despite Obvious Shortcomings

Most of the questions in yesterday’s post were directed at Clear Channel, the owner of several radio stations on Oahu, including KSSK-AM, a designated emergency broadcaster. The questions implied criticism of the response by some first responders. Columnist Lee Cataluna in today’s Advertiser shows we’re not alone in thinking the response should have been better.

As Cataluna notes, KSSK’s response to the outage was initially anchored by Mike Buck, a talk show host on KHVH, another Clear Channel station. We also were impressed by Buck’s businesslike handling of the emergency – straightforward, fact-based and relatively little nonsense.

But that changed within an hour when the weekday morning drive time team of Michael W. Perry and Larry Price took over. Fom that moment on, it might as well have been Tuesday.

Perry and Price deserve accolades as radio entertainers. Their show’s ratings – like that of the legendary “J. Akuhead Pupule” before them on Cec Heftel’s KGMB-AM – are always at the top and may make P&P the most dominant radio show for their market in the country.

But unlike “Aku,” who could turn off the zaniness when the moment demanded journalism, the current team can’t find the off switch. The self-professed “Masters of Disaster” seem immune to suggestions they somehow don’t measure up, bolstered as they are by the praise phoned in by adoring fans. Here’s Perry in today’s Advertiser:

"Larry and I just sort of know what to do. It's not a burden at all. My gosh, it's the best possible use for your radio and our electrons."

No, the best possible use of the station’s airtime as a designated emergency broadcaster would be to serve, not entertain. Rather than encourage calls from listeners on how to aerate fish tanks, the team might have kept lines open or showed some inquisitiveness about any number of crisis scenarios – such as apartment dwellers who were trapped in elevators. The 10 o’clock news Friday night reported on at least 42 such cases even as the outage continued.

Upon Further Review

Two calls to the station illustrate how Perry & Price so often miss an opportunity to serve. A caller inquired about whether the outage would affect the water supply for toilets and such. He was laughed off the air with the observation, “The water’s flowing, isn’t it?” or something close to that. Another caller asked whether the canoe regattas scheduled for Saturday would be cancelled. Again, one of the team seemed incredulous and dismissive. The sun would be shining!

Yet by Saturday morning the Board of Water Supply was urging water conservation, and an Iolani School canoe coach called to say the ILH regatta was cancelled.

The P&P knee-jerk reaction is to play it for laughs rather than treat the emergency like what it is – a time of uncertainty and even trauma for tens of thousands of listeners. As one of the Ps quipped about the blackout on the Windward Side: 

“The only light in Kailua was from the rockets red glare…. The good news is that they’re depleted….”

What would a service-oriented emergency broadcast station do in similar circumstances? One can imagine such a station admonishing the public to NOT call in unless the message is critical. On-air personnel might well keep incoming lines free of all “frivolous” calls so first responders could communicate their messages.

Clear Channel’s response to the above criticism – if it were to respond at all – is likely to be as dismissive as Perry and Price are when the mood strikes them. The company’s top executive told a Media Council gathering in 2007 that the team’s ratings show they must be doing something right.

And to that, we would agree; Perry and Price do their act exceptionally well from 5 to 10 a.m. Monday through Saturday. But in Friday's emergency, the team seemed stuck in a weekday morning mood (right down to answering the phones "Good morning").

And maybe it’s not the celebrities’ fault. Maybe it’s Clear Channel’s philosophy to “be entertaining” in the midst of emergencies. If that’s the case, citizens have a legitimate reason to question whether that's what we need in a crisis.  Dozens of mainland radio stations get serious when the going gets tough.  Hawaii deserves a similar response.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Questions re Oahu Island-Wide Blackout, e.g. ‘What Is the Emergency Broadcaster’s Role?’

The December 26-27 power outage that affected all of Oahu lasted about 15 hours at our house, longer than many neighborhoods but shorter than others. The post-incident analysis has yet to begin, so we’ll confine ourselves to asking some questions.

Questions for Hawaiian Electric

Q: How is it that a lightning strike at the Kahe power plant on the Waianae Coast – if that was the cause – could knock out the entire grid?
Q: Since the islands are isolated from other grids, what measures have been designed into the system to guard against what happened last night?
Q: Why didn’t the system isolate the problem at the Kahe plant and preserve the viability of the Waiau and downtown Honolulu plants?
Q: Why did measures fail that presumably were designed into the system to prevent such an eventuality?
Q: Were circuit breakers timed to react quickly enough to isolate Kahe and protect the rest of the grid? (That was the cause of the island-wide power outage on “Black Wednesday” -- July 13, 1983.)
Q: Did HECO’s load shedding occur according to plan, or did the Waiau and Honolulu plants shut down because load shedding didn’t happen quickly enough?

Questions for Clear Channel

Q: Do the on-air emergency broadcast personalities truly believe island-wide outages are to be expected routinely because Hawaii is not connected to a larger grid?
Q: Have our emergency broadcasters received training from Hawaiian Electric officials to help them grasp the complexities of the grid so they in turn can speak intelligently about power emergencies?
Q: How does KSSK owner Clear Channel believe an emergency broadcast outlet should operate during an emergency?
Q: Is that operating philosophy “entertainment as usual”? Is the station’s award-winning weekday morning team told to adopt an “entertainment” or “emergency” model during power outages?
Q: Should on-air personalities be dismissive of callers who question the electric company’s ability to measure up to reliability standards? I.E., is it their role to defend the utility’s performance? Does management want them to ask probing questions about that performance?
Q: Considering the operational possibilities, would it be in the public interest for an emergency broadcaster to discourage listeners from calling the station except for urgent matters?
Q: Might it be a good operating principle to keep the incoming phone lines open for police messages, government officials’ statements, medical advisories, persons stuck in elevators, and the rest?
Q: Should station ratings made during non-crisis times be used to judge whether an emergency broadcaster has acted in the public interest during an emergency? (Such a justification was used to defend KSSK’s performance following Earthquake Sunday.)
Q: Why did KSSK-FM go off the air repeatedly in the early hours of the outage? As a sister station to the AM designated emergency station, shouldn’t the FM station’s generator operate on demand when required to do so? What tests and rehearsals does the emergency broadcaster conduct to ensure all its stations remain on the air during an emergency?

Questions for State Civil Defense

Q: Did your office attempt to activate the emergency broadcast “interrupt” service that cuts into regular programming across the state? Governor Lingle’s voice came on, then cut out at one point during the evening.
Q. Did that system fail last night?
Q: How much money has been spent over the past two years to upgrade SCD’s emergency communications capability?

Question for the White House

Q: Is Hawaii off limits for President Obama in light of last night’s power blackout?

Listeners have heaped praise on KSSK’s broadcast team, and Clear Channel management is unlikely to take any of these questions seriously. Nevertheless, the public has a right to ask them and demand more from its emergency responders.

That said, we have to note that the City & County’s Emergency Management Center was operational and providing information over the air sooner than just about any other source last night. That’s a good contrast to the criticism it took after the recent flooding.

Citizens demanding better performance can’t hurt and may in fact do some good.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Oahu Ops Center Was Closed at Storm’s Peak

The Advertiser coverage of yesterday’s major storm includes the observation that “city emergency management officials reached between 4 and 6 a.m. appeared caught off guard by the extent of problems stacking up island-wide.”

The Emergency Operations Center wasn’t opened until three hours after heavy rain began pounding Oahu and the weather service issued a flash flood warning.

The story includes officials’ rationale that all such warnings don’t necessarily trigger a full-on response due to budget and other constraints. Nevertheless, most citizens undoubtedly would rather have officials on the job as water 4 feet deep flooded their homes and neighborhoods.

As the saying goes, “you never learn less,” and maybe Oahu officials have learned something from this experience. A page one story that contrasts their response with that of Kauai, which opened its operations center two hours earlier, can be a good teaching point.

MISSION: To Ensure the Lahaina Fire Tragedy Will Be the Last Time Hawaii Emergency Management so Poorly Serves the Public

The cause of the August 2023 wildfire that destroyed Lahaina, Maui and killed at least 101 residents is still unknown at this writing. What ...