Editing Emergency Broadcast System (section)

===Purpose of the Test, Cultural Impact and Criticism===
The purpose of the tests was to allow the FCC and broadcasters to verify that EBS tone transmitters and decoders were functioning properly. In addition to the weekly tests, test activations of the entire system were conducted periodically for many years. These tests showed that about 80% of broadcast outlets nationwide would carry emergency programming within a period of five minutes if it had ever become necessary to activate the EBS at the national level.{{cn|date=February 2025}}

The weekly broadcasts of the EBS attention signal and test scripts made it a significant part of the American cultural fabric of its time, and became the subject of a great number of jokes and skits, such as the sung versions of the announcement in the mid-1970s. On an episode of Family Feud hosted by John O'Hurley, at the beginning of the Fast Money Round, O'Hurley stated to the player starting off the round that his teammate who was to finish off the round was in back listening to an EBS test just to be sarcastic. In addition, many people have testified to being frightened by the test patterns and attention signal as children, and even more so by actual emergencies.{{cn|date=February 2025}}

Although intended for the president to communicate with the American people in the event of a national emergency, many critics questioned whether the EBS would work in an actual emergency scenario.{{cn|date=February 2025}} Curt Beckmann of [[WCCO-AM]] expressed his doubts about the system's effectiveness in a 1984 interview:

{{blockquote|I'll tell you why it probably wouldn't work, because if the President has a national emergency, he will call in the national radio and television networks, and presto, he will communicate with us. If those networks are somehow incapacitated, and he has to go to the EBS as a backup, it's inconceivable that the rest of us will be up and running if the networks aren't up and running.<ref>{{cite AV media |date=May 19, 2008 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Pi6jlpV64 |title=(RadioTapes.com) WCCO-AM (830 AM) - EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) WTCN-TV (now KARE-TV) 1984 |publisher=RadioTapes |via=[[YouTube]] |access-date=August 10, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210506094332/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Pi6jlpV64 |archive-date=May 6, 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>}}