blink / flash echo text in a menu

I have a ksh script that is a login menu for my end users. I would like to have one line of the welcome message flash when there is a system notice about an impending outage.
The welcome message is a series of echo statements which prints a text file "msg of the day" with the status msg.
I tried repeating a sleep and clear command on the whole welcome message but it didnt work well and looked a bit dorky.
Any ideas?

clear
echo ""
echo " WELCOME "
echo " User id : $USER"
if [ -f $MSG_OF_DAY -a -n "$1" ]; then
print_msgofday
fi
echo "***********************\n"

The TERM variable should be pointing to a database of terminal characteristics and you should be able to use tput to query it. There are a lot of characteristics defined but I suggest that you stick to a basic few. In particular, I would use smso and rmso for this type of thing (the letters mean [start|remove] mode stand out). Not all terminals can blink or bold or underline text. But almost all have some way to make important text stand out and they should all have something useful in smso.

quick ksh example:

echo abc $(tput smso) def $(tput rmso) ghi