I've begun receiving alerts from the Commercial Mobile Alert System on my phone. For those not in the know, you can take a look at the link below.
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/commercial-mobile-alert-system-cmasBasically, those severe weather alerts that used to go across the bottom of your television screen (do they still? I don't have TV.) are transmitted to your phone. There's the same loud, buzzy tone, and when you shut it off, you see the nature of the alert. All of mine have been tornado
warnings for the area I was currently in. Not watches,
warnings, so I'm pretty satisfied with the usefulness of the system.
Problem is, the
loud,
annoying,
unmistakable tone happens even if your phone is on silent.
For lots of reasons, I keep my phone on silent in the booth, not off. (Good example: I am the only technician on any of my shows. Power went out in the booth during a show but I was able to keep running the show since the boards were on UPSs. I texted the TD who I knew was just down the hall and he managed to get things fixed, and no one was the wiser. Had I needed to turn on my phone, which boots slow, the UPSs may have run out of power and the show would have stopped.) But if one of those alerts goes off, everyone is going to be able to hear it.
So I'm weighing the decision whether or not a theatre full of patrons hearing that tone is worth the advance warning I would get of bad weather and being able to start our theatre mandated tornado warning practices to keep our patrons and casts safe. In theory there is supposed to be someone watching the weather for us when there are shows on. But I know how mad things can get for my co-workers when there can be upwards of 1500 kids running around, and for some reason, I am the only one in the building (that I know of) that gets these alerts. My phone company is an early adopter, I guess? If I got the warning I could text my producer and ask for instruction instead of waiting for someone to notice a radar screen that might be hiding behind their e-mail, ticket software, or down the hall from where they were dealing with some other issue.
Yeah, it's kids, so that's weighing on my thoughts, too. Has anyone else had to make this decision?
Edited to add topic tag. - Maribeth