Small Market Radio Newsletter - Contingency Planning Checklist

They are NOT the same! Threats are unanticipated events, the results of which are negative impacts on your operations (risks). Make sure you evaluate ALL your risks (natural, man-made, socio-economic/political & criminal/terrorism), and ALL your risks (economic, physical, human, environmental, regulatory, supply & distribution chain, etc.). Figure out what you can endure and still survive, and what must be protected at virtually any cost. Draw on data readily available on the Internet and through local authorities, along with your own experiences and instinct. [top]

2. ONCE RISKS & THREATS ARE IDENTIFIED, ASSESS THEIR LIKELIHOOD AND IMPACT ON YOUR ENTIRE ENTERPRISE

Some risks and threats are greater than others in both likelihood and impact, depending on the time of year and the geographic location of your plant. Remember to consider BOTH your on-air and back-office operations. [top]

3. ASSESS YOUR GENERAL PREPAREDNESS & AVAILABLE ASSETS

Begin at the beginning, with the most likely hazards to befall any commercial enterprise: fire and flood.

Do you have a plan for evacuating the building, notifying key decision-makers at any hour, relocating and resuming your critical operations, maintaining client care and employee welfare, and obtaining vital supplies under inhospitable conditions?

Go on to create scenarios for those crises your organization is most likely to endure - and for each one, a plan of action for response, recovery and mitigation. [top]

4. UTILITY PROVISIONS

In the event that you lose commercial power, is there a second commercial grid onto which you can be auto-switched? Do you have sufficient electrical generating capacity to sustain life-safety, environmental & broadcast systems at both studios and transmitter sites? Is your fuel supply topped off and "polished" regularly? Do you test the system under a heavy draw at least quarterly? How about backup power at any intercity relay sites you may require to complete your STL loop?

If you lose phone service, does every key member of your ops team have a cellular or Nextel phone (preferably BOTH), and spare batteries and chargers to go with them? And does every member of the staff have those reach numbers at hand?

If you still rely on landlines to get your signal or any of your production components from point A to point B, do you have microwave backup and/or a second fiber vendor onto which you can hot-switch your traffic?

Do you know who on your staff is an amateur radio operator, and have you installed the necessary gear for said staffer(s) to establish ops, not for commercial broadcast, but to gather critical health and welfare information for verification and subsequent dissemination to the public?

If you lose municipal water service, are you on a priority list for bottled water and beverage service? Do you maintain a reasonable inventory of bottled water on-site in the event access to your facilities is impeded? Do you know methods of manually flushing commodes in the event your sites lose water pressure? [top]

5. RING-DOWN LISTS

Are personnel files updated at least semi-annually to make sure you have current home address, home phone, cell phone, pager and e-mail information for EVERYONE on your staff? Are these files kept in an easily-transportable format (like Microsoft Access) so they can be maintained off-site, on laptops or PDAs - and printed out onto Rolodex cards with ease? Are they cross-referenced by department, job function, last and first name and geographical location?

Do you maintain a similar set of files for your key vendors, news contacts, public officials, miscellaneous experts and nonprofit disaster relief agencies?

How about your client lists and contract files? How and where are they backed up and maintained? [top]

6. PANIC PROTOCOLS

Does each member of your staff know how to interpret and implement EAS notifications? Are there all-crisis guidebooks - well-organized, up-to-date and prominently displayed in all operational areas of your station - to help even novices commence emergency response plans in the absence of a manager?

Do those plans include management of sensitive commercial inventory (removing all airline spots, for example, when reporting a plane crash)?

Do you have a speed-dial system (either hardware or vendor-based) to reach off-site personnel and bring them into the station? Do you have some sort of on-air code which staffers can use to initiate a designated response when normal communications channels are down?

Are there general background packets on hand to help non-news people speak intelligently and informatively about the types of crises most likely to affect your listening or viewing area?

Have you established and promulgated clear ground rules for program interrupts (both in terms of circumstances and style), joined-in-progress programming restorations and programming normalization? [top]

7. STAFF CROSS-TRAINING

Emergencies can be routine and still be all-hands-on-deck events. Have you trained your back-office staff for on-air and production operations like call screening, board ops, field producing and reporting, emergency announcement processing (cancellations, delays, relocations, etc.)? [top]

8. FINANCIAL PLANNING

Do you keep a petty cash fund of, say, $100 per employee, on site for emergencies in which cash is the only accepted currency? (Depending on the nature of the crisis, this could be more the rule than the exception.) [top]

9. HUMAN FACTORS

It would not be unusual for staffers to work extraordinarily long shifts under stressful circumstances in a cataclysmic emergency. Are you prepared to shelter your personnel in-place? Do you have cots or sleeping bags, and a quiet place to deploy them? Are there phones for them to use to keep in touch with their families? Do you have a stock of energy bars and other nutritious snacks on hand? Comfort items like bathroom tissue, paper cups and plates, plastic utensils, a microwave oven, refrigerator/freezer, a toaster oven, etc.? Access to grief counseling and stress management? [top]

10. FIRST AID

Do at least two people in every department and on every shift know community first aid and CPR? How about rescue resources? You’ll want more than those off-the-shelf aspirin-&-bandage dispensaries on site.

Do you have materials for immobilizing injured limbs, and an automated external defibrillator? Instant hot and cold packs? Smelling salts? Pocket masks for rescue breathing? A first aid guide approved by the American Red Cross? How about portable oxygen & personal respirators in the event of a biological or nuclear emergency? [top]

11. ALTERNATE FACILITIES

Use the same rigorous risk assessment to evaluate sites for an alternate facility. Will you want a fully-equipped "hot" site? A partially-equipped, pre-leased "warm" site? Or a "cold" site - just some reserved space with an "ops-in-a-box" control & production platform and STL? Can you bunk with a co-owned sister, a TV station affiliated with the same network as your station, the local newspaper, a sponsor, the local cable head-end?

What facilities will you want or need in place to activate this site on very short notice? How will you get the right people there quickly? What are the cutover and cutback procedures? Can you apply existing automation technologies to the process?

With specific regard to transmitter sites, have your community’s broadcasters addressed the paradigm shift away from co-locating backup facilities at the main site? Have you collectively explored backups on each other’s towers to make sure there is always a viable facility available, given the widespread public aversion to new tower construction and short-spaced allocations that might preclude a new tower location anyway? [top]

12. RESOURCE PRE-POSITIONING/RIGHTS OF FIRST REFUSAL

Have you pre-arranged with vendors of key products and services for priority response in the event of a crisis - both to your primary and alternate facilities? Can you reach them when normal communications channels are down? Have you supplied them with a list of your needs to assure availability at a moment’s notice? [top]

13. TARGET-HARDENING

On the assumption that your station is the most likely target of deliberate damage in your community, what steps have you taken to improve access control and tracking; facilities reinforcement; entrance interlocks; impact-resistance glass in window lines accessible to the public; alarms and sensors; fencing; on-site patrols; recorded TV surveillance; etc.? [top]

14. SCATTERED LOGISTICS/ADAPTIVE RESPONSE

Do you keep your station vehicles and remote assets together in the station lot or garage? Have you thought about allowing at least some of these vehicles to go home with employees for a more rapid emergency response and to assure you have at least some broadcast assets away from your main facility in the event it is compromised or access to it is restricted in any way and for any length of time?

In a similar vein, might it be advantageous to consider more than one alternate facility if there is no one place which minimizes all significant risks likely to impact your operations? [top]

15. LONG-TERM VS. SHORT-TERM CRISIS PLANS

Not every emergency will be a newsworthy crisis that affects your entire listening or viewing area. In fact, the some of the most vexing crises you’ll face will be intensely local, affecting only you and your facility. How will you address business continuity under these conditions? Do you have a "bridge" plan for short-distance, short-duration relocation that can be free-standing for "physical plant emergencies" or the first part of another, more extensive plan for lengthier relocation farther away from your main facility in a community-wide crisis? [top]

16. COMMUNITY SERVICE OBLIGATIONS/SPECIAL NEEDS

Broadcasters must always stand ready to serve the public interest, convenience and necessity, even under the most inhospitable conditions. Do you have ready access to the experts and relief resources your community will need to get the through your common crisis? Has your risk analysis taken into account broader community needs in terms of information and comfort in such areas as temporary shelter, food and water, medical care, pets and special populations like the elderly, the infirm, children and non-English speakers? [top]

17. FORMAT CONSIDERATIONS

Yours may be a music-intensive radio station or a TV station without a news operation to speak of. Nonetheless, 9/11 proved that while all-news and news-talk listenership soared, many listeners stayed with non-news stations to which they were partial, sometimes just to hear a comforting voice. Is your non-news station ready for the challenge? Do you have a network affiliation, or a partnership agreement to share content with a spoken-word sister station or competitor, or with a local TV station? Have you re-subscribed to a wire service? What’s your plan when the music or other entertainment programming has to stop? [top]

18. NON-BROADCAST DISTRIBUTION

TV stations which lose over-the-air transmission facilities and have no backup immediately at hand should have at the ready an all-hours contact list for cable MSOs in their service areas, and contacts at the new direct-to-home satellite providers as well. Direct fiber and/or microwave paths to these providers should be established to maintain a dial presence at least for cable and satellite subscribers until over-the-air operations can be restored.

Radio stations should continue to stream via the Internet if those facilities are intact, and should also reach out to cable operators for carriage on local access channels if located in markets without an all-news radio station or local TV news operation. [top]

19. EMERGENCY OPERATING PROVISIONS

Did you know that FCC rules allow broadcasters to operate at full power and maximized pattern, regardless of license parameters and at any time of the day or night, in the event of an emergency in which life and property are at risk? [top]

20. NEWS ON THE CHEAP

Can’t afford a news department? News not a big part of your routine programming? Have you thought about recruiting interns from a local college journalism program to use your facility as an off-air lab, on condition that they be available for on-air and support duty during an emergency? It's a great way make sure there is always an extra hand around, even you already have paid news people - especially during those hours when they are out gathering news or simply not on duty. [top]

21. DISASTER PREP THAT PAYS FOR ITSELF

The costs of contingency planning almost require the effort to be somewhat self-sustaining. Can you compile disaster resources suitable for public consumption into a booklet you can sell to sponsors as a high-profile, year-round marketing investment? How about creating contingency sales/marketing & on-site participation packages for key clients who can provide critically-needed recovery services and products to your community? [top]

22. PRE-PRODUCTION CONSIDERATIONS

The time to prepare imagers, bumpers, graphics and other production elements is BEFORE disaster strikes. Once your risk analysis is complete, you’ll know what ills are likely to befall your community. And you can take advantage of the calm before the storm to think out various branding and image strategies and tactics, and work with your voice talent or (in TV) your graphics and promotions people to bring the same level of professionalism to fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants programming that you bring to your routine, tightly-formatted presentation. The polish conveys a feeling of calm competence to a frightened audience. [top]

23. DUPE AND DISTRIBUTE

As is the case with backup technology, don’t keep your critical data backups on-site or in any high-risk environment. Back up vital station records daily, and not just to servers, but (where possible) to laptops and even PDAs. Make more than one backup, and keep all but one backup off-site, preferably at a number of sites to which key employees will have easy access. [top]

24. EMPLOYEES ON TRAVEL

Require daily status checks from all employees on business travel, and see if you can persuade vacationing staffers in critical positions to leave a way they can be reached (even if through a third party such as a relative) at the very least. Explain that the nature of what we do requires keeping all essential personnel "in-pocket" - even when they have every right not to be. [top]

25. DRILL YOUR PLANS - EARLY AND OFTEN

Every disaster plan looks great on paper, but it is not until it is exercised that its flaws are revealed. Drill your plans at least twice a year, and vary the hours, days and scenarios with each exercise. It’s a bit disruptive … but so is the real thing. [top]

26. EXTRAORDINARY RESOURCE PLANNING

The secret of surviving disasters is smartly anticipating anything and EVERYTHING you might need to continue or enhance your operations.

For example, if you’re in a market where, say, airborne traffic reporting is more the exception than the rule, have you thought about how you’d cover a regional disaster from the air?

How about your website? How will you keep that up and running? [top]

27. MEMORY JOGGERS

Have you thought about assembling a wallet card containing your critical internal and external contact information? In a crisis, the average brain races in a million different directions; anything you can do to simplify the thought/action process will help. [top]

28. SHARING CAPITAL EXPENSES

In the days immediately following 9/11, when mayoral news conferences were taking place in NYC with some frequency, the networks and local stations pooled resources to establish a single multilateral fiber loop from City Hall that fed all of the city’s broadcast news operations simultaneously from a single video/audio source. The broadcasters rotated camera responsibilities at City Hall, allowing them to better deploy their already-strained field resources elsewhere, while still covering an important, but basically generic, news event. This kind of system works well at emergency operations centers, sports arenas, airports - anywhere everyone will need to be on an ongoing basis in a disaster. And it pays for itself year-round by freeing up resources for an ever growing number of "one-shots." It works for transmission plants; why not explore the possibilities elsewhere? [top]

29. VEHICLE PREP

In addition to scattering your field fleet for more effective deployment, make sure those assigned vehicles maintain them in accordance with the manufacture’s maintenance schedule - and more frequently as applications demand.

No one should park a station vehicle without making sure it’s fully fueled, critical fluid levels are topped off, and tire pressure is adequate. Make sure each car has jumper cables, a battery-powered air compressor (which can also help you dry out water-logged electronics) and a high-powered spotlight and flares/safety reflectors.

If your vehicles are parked in precarious places during news coverage, you might want to consider installing a conspicuity package of flashing strobes in the head or taillights, on the roof or on the dashboard and rear deck. [top]

30. OWNING THE "RELIABILITY" IMAGE

Your station can talk the talk, but you have to walk the walk to master this aspect of disaster preparedness. It helps to do some news programming and promote it even when things are quiet. But even if you have no news department, (and after 9/11, we’d have to politely question that decision) and you’ve empowered your air staff with some of the aforementioned tricks, you can promote that to your advantage. It can be a simple as reminding your listeners of what you’ve done to assure that you’ll stay on the air no matter what. No one wants to profit from the misfortunes of others … but you need to let your listeners know you’ll be there when the slogging gets tough. [top]

31. GO TEAMS/GO KITS

We’d love to take credit for this one, but all credit is due the A. H. Belo Broadcast Group, which turned this concept into an art form.

The Belo stations use a common design for a lot of their engineering across their station group so that a Belo tech from one station can feel right at home in ANY Belo station. When reporters and crews travel to other markets, they come self-contained, drawing on a "go kit" that is reserved for such purposes, containing almost everything they’d need to sustain themselves without much help from a host station. These gear assemblies are even pre-carneted for international customs clearance.

The reporters and crews themselves are rotated monthly on and off a Go Team, each member of which carries a common pager number and is tasked to be ready to go anywhere news is breaking on about an hour’s notice. Belo goes so far as to limit the amount of social drinking Go Team members can do when they are "on rotation."

Go Kits, Jump Bags - whatever the name, the purpose is the same: to have essential supplies at your fingertips when you have to fly out the door. [top]

32. THE IMPORTANCE OF ROUTINE MAINTENANCE

When was the last time you had your guy wire chocks checked; tower relamping done; inspected your fire extinguishers and any battery-operated life-safety devices; overhauled your mechanical transcription systems, programming and engineering control surfaces, etc? There’ll be no time and no available bodies during a crisis - so take advantage of downtime to keep your systems in peak operating condition. [top]

33. IT IS CHEAPER TO UNDO THAN TO DO

Procrastination is the trap door of disaster planning. Delaying one’s planning for contingencies can render the entire process moot. It is almost impossible to plan well in the midst of a disaster - and since disasters can happen at the most inopportune times (holidays, weekends, overnights, etc.), the idea is to have a good-to-go plan tested and in place well before it is needed.

If the protocol is commenced, only to be cancelled shortly thereafter, the costs are usually far less than those incurred winging a plan on the fly and in the thick of a disaster. And remember, most plans created for unthinkable events are easily and quickly adapted to the more-likely routine emergencies. In any event, it is money well-spent.

Do NOT fall into the trap of using return-on-investment calculations to make the go/no-go decisions when it comes to disaster planning. Contingency prep is more properly considered - and evaluated - as an insurance policy. Determine the value and indispensability of the asset to be protected, and what amount of disaster prep investment constitutes a reasonable and prudent percentage of that value. [top]