We all assume that if something major happens—a national emergency, an Amber Alert, a severe weather outbreak—we’ll be warned immediately. Our phones, radios, and TVs will scream to life with that blaring tone, interrupting whatever we’re doing to tell us what’s going on. But here’s the ugly truth: if you rely on streaming services for your media, you might never hear the warning.

I noticed this personally during the most recent national Emergency Alert System (EAS) test. As someone who’s spent decades in broadcasting, I knew the test was scheduled and intentionally tuned into a live stream to catch it. Sure enough, the alert came through loud, clear, and disruptive—exactly how it’s supposed to be. But then it hit me: if I had been watching Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, or any other streaming platform, I would have missed it completely.

Back when I got my original broadcast license—yes, there was a time when you actually needed one to sit behind a console—emergency training was drilled into us. It wasn’t some optional thing; it was a federal mandate. I ran plenty of shifts where we had to physically stop programming, punch buttons, and run Emergency Broadcast System tests live. It wasn’t automated like it mostly is now. You felt the responsibility of that button. You knew somebody’s life might depend on it.

Today, most traditional radio and TV stations have EAS tied into automated systems, but that responsibility hasn’t changed. If you are licensed to broadcast, you are required to monitor for national alerts and interrupt programming when necessary. It’s baked into the core of broadcasting.

Streaming services? Not so much. They aren’t broadcasters. They’re classified as “information services” under federal law, and guess what—that means they aren’t legally required to carry emergency alerts at all. They can interrupt programming if they want to… but most of them don’t. So if you’re watching your “local news” on Peacock or Hulu or YouTube TV instead of a real broadcast feed, you are rolling the dice with your own safety. And don’t even get me started on how little public education there’s been about this gap—because nobody talks about it.

And here’s the part that really makes my blood boil: there’s nobody at the wheel anymore. Thanks to years of budget cuts and neglect by the Cheto in charge and the band of idiots he left behind, the FCC is a hollow shell of what it used to be. There’s no real leadership. No real oversight. No one making sure that when a national alert goes out, it actually reaches everyone. Whether that’s an afterthought or by design is debatable—but either way, it’s dangerous.

Streaming has eaten traditional media alive. Everyone saw it coming. Radio people lived through it first. We warned that the structure of media was crumbling. Now TV is falling the same way. And the one thing—the absolute one thing—that traditional broadcast had left to offer—the ability to scream when something’s wrong—streaming conveniently forgot about. Or maybe they didn’t forget. Maybe they just didn’t want the responsibility.

The bottom line? If you’re depending on a streaming app to keep you safe during a disaster, good luck. You might get an alert. You might not. Your life might be protected. It might not. It all depends on which corporate overlord you’re subscribed to and whether they decided that day to care.

If streaming is going to be the future of media, then it’s time to hold them to the same emergency standards that we demanded from every single radio and TV station that ever signed on a transmitter. Otherwise, we’re just trading convenience for silence—and when the real emergency comes, it’ll be too damn late to complain that nobody warned us.