It would be easy and cheap, considering that the stations could use their existing emergency broadcast system to spread the word. And it had been done before, to great success, in Dallas.
More than a year later, despite support from police and politicians, no program is in place.
"I don't know why this is stalled," said John Dimick, operations manager of country station KSON. It's not that anyone doubts whether the project will work. It's proven to be a lifesaver elsewhere.
The idea of using broadcast outlets to help find missing kids was born in Dallas after a young girl named Amber Hagerman was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. A call from a listener inspired radio executives to design the "Amber Plan," which is activated in a limited number of missing-child cases. The emergency broadcast system, which normally spreads the word about bad weather, interrupts radio and TV broadcasts with brief alerts. In Dallas, the Amber Plan has been credited with the safe return of a half-dozen children. In one case, parents told police that their baby sitter had kidnapped their child and driven away in a unique-looking pickup truck.
Five minutes after the broadcast, a motorist spotted the truck and reported it to police. The child was safe. Houston just adopted its own version of the Amber Plan. Florida and Oklahoma have statewide alert programs, and Arkansas is considering one. "It's going to save a lot of kids when it gets implemented throughout the country," said Ben Ermini of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "It's just a logical plan that costs very little."
Back in San Diego, KSON's Randall and Rochester got the high-profile support of Susan Golding, then the mayor of San Diego, who mentioned the project in her 2000 State of the City address.
The Amber Plan became the "Amanda Plan," named after 9-year-old Amanda Gaeke, a San Diego girl who was kidnapped and murdered in 1991. And radio stations set up fax machines in their studios to accept emergency messages. Then, nothing happened. Nothing is still happening.
Part of the problem is that Golding was distracted by the ballpark fiasco and is now out of office, said Mark Larson, general manager of KPRZ and KCBQ and president of the San Diego Radio Broadcasters Association.
Larson said radio stations are ready to go.
"Any time we can bring the stations together to save some lives, that rises above all the different formats and who's playing 12 songs in a row or who's doing hot topics on talk shows," he said.
Even so, radio stations shouldn't wait for politicians to act to get the Amanda Plan in place. Broadcasters should meet with police and get things rolling on their own. Something this simple shouldn't be this hard.