History
From the 1960s to the 1980s, a special feature of the NOAA Weather Radio system was the transmission of a single tone at 1050 Hz prior to the broadcast of any message alerting the general public of significant weather events. This became known as the Warning Alarm Tone (WAT). Although it has served NOAA Weather Radio well, there were many drawbacks: without staff at media facilities to manually evaluate the need to rebroadcast a Weather Radio message using the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS), automatic rebroadcasting of all messages preceded by just the WAT was unacceptable and impractical. Even if stations and others with that type of need were willing to allow for this type of automatic capture, assuming the events for activation were critical, there was no way for automated equipment at the station to know when the message was complete and restore it back to normal operation.
In 1985, the National Weather Service forecast offices began experimenting with putting special digital codes at the beginning and end of every message concerning life- or property-threatening weather conditions targeting a specific area. The intent of what became SAME was to ultimately transmit a code with the initial broadcast of all Weather Radio messages. The NWS started implementing SAME on the full NOAA Weather Radio system in 1988. The SAME technique was later adopted by the FCC in 1997 for regular broadcasters on radio, television, and cable, as well as by Environment Canada in 2004 for its Weatheradio Canada service. Much like the original EBS alert tone, this produces a distinct sound which is easily recognized by most individuals due to its use in weekly and monthly broadcast tests, and in weather emergencies. During the said events, viewers and/or listeners will hear these digital codes in the form of buzzes, chirps, & clicking sounds (or what broadcast engineers affectionately call "duck farts") just before the attention signal is sent out and at the conclusion of the voice message.
Read more about this topic: Specific Area Message Encoding
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