Orange County residents were stunned on Thursday, September 21, when television broadcasts were abruptly interrupted by an ominous “Doomsday” warning message. One eyewitness, Stacy Laflamme of Lake Forest, said she was watching HGTV through Cox Communications around 11:05 am when suddenly a red alert splash screen appeared on her screen, accompanied by a voice.
"Understand this, these are very cruel and terrible times," came a male voice in the warning-notification. Laflamme said she was very alarmed. “It sounded like a radio broadcast going through the TV,” she added. In addition to the Cox system channels, this apocalyptic warning sounded on Spectrum channels.
Another eyewitness, Erin Mireles of Diamond Bar, was watching Bravo's Spectrum when the show was interrupted by dire warning. “I was just amazed because the confusion grew exponentially,” she said. “At first I was not alarmed, but then. After a couple of minutes everything was back to normal on the Bravo.
The mysterious alert alert has become a hot topic on social media. The problem stemmed from one or more radio stations conducting an emergency crash test, Cox spokesman Joe Camero said Thursday. Cable systems began to experience such warnings, and viewers were only required to see a typical crash test broadcast.
“With these tests, only an emergency signal is sent,” Camero said. “After sending a tone, another tone is sent to complete the message. It looks like the radio (or stations) did not transmit the end tone to complete the test."
Then a mysterious audio message was superimposed on the broadcast, which somehow got into the warning. Camero said that Cox technicians interrupted the mysterious audio specials as soon as they learned of the problem. “We don't want to scare anyone with any false alarms,” he said.
Cox and Spectrum are investigating who sent out the warning and whether it was accidental or intentional. But it is not clear how and where this audio message came from. It has not been determined if the audio warning is related to a prediction by David Meade, a "research and investigator" who believes catastrophic events will occur this Saturday.