WASHINGTON—In a filing with the Federal Communications Commission, The Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance has come out in favor of the FCC setting a firm date to end current ATSC broadcasts.

In its Jan. 20 filing, the group, which is made up of commercial and public broadcasters, national trade associations, and technology manufacturers backing the advanced alerting capabilities of ATSC 3.0, also backed some of the security features built into the ATSC 3.0 standard and highlighted improved emergency alerting capabilities of NextGen TV that broadcasters will be able to use to keep local communities safe.

“As the Commission has previously noted, Next Generation broadcasting will permit new ways for broadcasters to connect with and inform their audiences, including more targeted, specific, and helpful alerts and information that can be transmitted from TV stations to viewers within reach of broadcast signals,” the filing said, adding that “the AWARN Alliance emphasizes that the full capabilities of the standard are best implemented once the availability of ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals is ubiquitous across the country. This will allow broadcasters to enhance connections with the public safety community and deliver new alerting tools and capabilities that will save lives and property during emergencies.”

“The introduction and widespread adoption of voluntary Advanced Emergency Information that is possible with the ATSC 3.0 standard requires certainty from the FCC about the likely sunset of ATSC 1.0 signals, so that newsroom and production investments can be made to take advantage of the advanced features of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard,” AWARN Alliance, executive director David H. Arland wrote in a letter to the FCC.

The filing did not advance a specific date for that sunset. The NAB has proposed that the signals be ended in larger markets in 2028 and the whole country by 2030.

The filing also defended some of the features of the 3.0 standard that are designed to protect content and broadcast signals from piracy.

“Content security has become a common requirement for high-value content, which also means that receiving devices must be fully security verified to tune to most broadcast ATSC 3.0 content today,” Arland wrote. “Without proper security credentials, a consumer cannot view ATSC 3.0 signals from broadcasters that have enabled content security. For more than 18,000,0000 potential viewers who have purchased a TV receiver equipped with NextGen TV electronics, this is not an issue, as the NextGen TV sets are security verified, enabling audiences to access all NextGen TV content, whether encrypted or not, without needing an internet connection or subscription. It is a seamless experience.”

In addition, Arland stressed that “Many of the set-top receivers are also security verified, also delivering seamless access to all content” and that only one product has “not yet resolved security issues, and those customers are able to tune to ATSC 1.0 broadcasts and related EAS messages from local stations.”

“The use of content security does not in any way impede the delivery of EAS messages or Advanced Emergency Information; emergency alerts and related public safety information are delivered as part of the ATSC 3.0 service and are available whenever the underlying channel is receivable,” Arland concluded. “Since the content security system is agnostic to the content being delivered, the Commission should expect that programming content that includes emergency messages would be transmitted in the same secure manner. Properly implemented, all content is equally secure and accessible.”

The filing also urged the FCC to establish policies so that “local viewers should not have their channel choices hijacked by MVPDs during emergencies, as has previously been the case with some cable operators. Rather, cable operators should let local broadcasters inform local audiences with appropriate EAS warnings and information, since local TV stations are typically staffed to provide more information than a pass-through multichannel provider.”

“Local stations are the best option for keeping local audiences informed during specific emergencies, including providing geolocation targeted information, maps, multilingual and sign language services, and other capabilities that are anticipated in the ATSC 3.0 standard,” the AWARN Alliance argued, adding that “news and weather departments at stations staffed with newsrooms will have these new tools available to keep their viewers informed, including those who are referred to local broadcast TV stations by WEA wireless telephone alerts. The Advanced Emergency Information capability of the ATSC 3.0 standard can also be utilized to supplement brief emergency alerts, including potentially the delivery of rich-media content such as maps, video clips, and other advisories…In summary, advanced emergency information and alerts enabled by ATSC 3.0 – and by FCC rules, requirements and policies that foster innovation – further enhance broadcasters’ capabilities to serve their communities.”

The full filing is available here.

WASHINGTON—The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance made the rounds at the Federal Communications Commission last week to underscore the importance of removing the ATSC 1.0-3.0 simulcast requirement, establishing a date certain for the shutoff of legacy DTV and setting a date by which broadcasters must transmit 3.0 to facilitate a successful transition and support continued technological innovation in broadcasting.

AWARN Alliance executive director Dave Arland and Ed Czarnecki, AWARN steering committee member and vice president of government and international affairs at Digital Alert Systems, met July 25 with FCC Media Bureau and Public Safety Bureau staff, as well as legal and policy advisers to Commissioners Anna Gomez and Olivia Trusty, to discuss how realizing all of the benefits of advanced emergency warnings depends on shutting down ATSC 1.0 and fully transitioning to 3.0, along with other issues, according to notices of ex parte communication sent to the agency.

Arland and Czarnecki told Media Bureau staff that “the full capabilities of the ATSC 3.0 standard require that each broadcaster have at its disposal an entire 6Mhz channel, as is done today with ATSC 1.0 transmissions, in order to have the certainty of knowing what technology will be utilized in the future before committing to more extensive deployment of ATSC 3.0’s full range of capabilities,” according to one of the ex parte notices.

Certainty of a date for the full transition to 3.0 will enable local stations to plan for “necessary technical upgrades and staff training to more fully deploy the capabilities of ATSC 3.0 such as advanced emergency alerting and information messaging,” the pair told the Media Bureau staff.

During the Media Bureau meeting, the AWARN Alliance representatives discussed A331, the ATSC standard on signaling, delivery, synchronization and error protection. Media Bureau staff inquired about the “wake-up bit” that can bring an ATSC 3.0 receiver out of sleep mode during an emergency, the notice about the meeting said.

The meeting with Public Safety Bureau staff covered the same material with additional discussion about advanced emergency alerting and information demonstrations. Noting that there have been some demos and real-world examples of how 3.0 has enhanced emergency alerting, Arland and Czarnecki added, “it’s very much a ‘chicken-and-egg’ situation” as broadcasters wait for the ability to devote all of their assigned spectrum to 3.0 and for more of their audience to have NextGen TVs and receiving devices.

The meeting with Gomez’s staff covered much of the same territory. Deena Shelter, legal adviser to Gomez, noted that the FCC does not want to leave any consumer behind during the transition and that there is no coupon program, as there was during the analog-to-digital transition. The AWARN pair said the transition would not succeed without certainty from the FCC regarding 1.0 shutoff.

Arland and Czarnecki told Shelter that “[i]naction could threaten the important technological innovations that ATSC 3.0 is designed to deliver,” the ex parte communication notice of the meeting with Gomez’s staff said.

During the meeting with Trusty’s staff, ATSC 3.0 digital rights management (DRM) was discussed in addition to the topics addressed at the other meetings. Broadcasters are using DRM to ensure free over-the-air transmission of high-value content is available, the communications notice for the Trusty meeting said.

“Arland noted that consumers have already purchased more than 15,000,000 ATSC 3.0 NextGen TV sets that work seamlessly with DRM technology and that only a small relative number of consumers are impacted by a set-top box product sold with a banned chipset that cannot be authorized to decode protected content,” the notice said, referring to the SiliconDust HDHomeRun 4K Flex and the HiSilicon SoC (system on a chip) that it uses.

BALTIMORE—Sinclair will make the first public showing of a NextGen TV-enabled Android media tablet with integrated ATSC 3.0 receiver and antenna during the public-safety convention APCO 2025, to be held July 27-30 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

The broadcaster, exhibiting with the AWARN Alliance and Digital Alert Systems in booth 3065, is debuting the media tablet during the annual gathering of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials to underscore the important role ATSC 3.0 can play in keeping the public informed during emergencies—whether at home watching TV or on the move.=

“We’ve had our eye on APCO for this demonstration because we want to show public safety officials—particularly public-safety communications officials—what 3.0 can do in the home and on the go in a public safety context,” Patrick McFadden, senior vice president for global public policy and communications at Sinclair, said.

But why should a tablet that can already connect to a cell tower or Wi-Fi network need ATSC 3.0 to receive emergency messaging? It boils down to resiliency, McFadden said.

“I’m not taking a shot at the wireless carriers, but their networks are just designed differently than ours,” he said. “If you look at some of those counties in Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, 60 to 70% of the cell sites went out of service. Our station in Asheville never went off the air.

“That resilience and reliability is tremendous for the TV viewer, but what about someone who’s out of their home when the emergency happens or someone who’s been evacuated?” he asked, rhetorically. “If we can combine our resilience with the ubiquity of mobile devices, that’s a pretty huge public-safety benefit.”

McFadden declined to identify the company responsible for making the NextGen TV-enabled tablet but said Sinclair has been “working with a number of manufacturers” to develop 3.0 mobile devices, including tablets and phones.

In October 2020, Sinclair subsidiary ONE Media Technologies surprised the industry when it unveiled production samples of the Mark One NextGen TV-enabled smartphone. Since then, it has rolled out the next-generation Mark Two smartphone.

Like the Mark One, the tablet shown next week at the gathering is not available for purchase, he said, adding, “I would characterize it as a precommercial trial.” However, the broadcaster has ordered “a large number of these devices,” a sign that the tablet is beyond the proof-of-concept stage. “We’re confident that the market will advance as 3.0 moves forward,” McFadden said.

Besides the NextGen TV-enabled tablet, Sinclair will show the Mark Two 3.0-enabled smartphone as well as NextGen TV dongles that work with mini devices. All of these devices will be used to demonstrate to the more than 5,000 show attendees what emergency alert messages and advanced emergency information could look like on these devices, he said.

Broadcasters in North Carolina, including PBS North Carolina and Capitol Broadcasting’s WNGT, along with several technology developers and vendors demonstrated a few years ago the ability of ATSC 3.0 digital broadcast paging to transmit emergency call data to first responders in the field.

Sinclair’s APCO 2025 demonstration of the version 3.0 tablet and phone, however, will focus on the consumer-facing side of emergency communications, not first responders. “One of the great things about 3.0 is it can do both [communicate to first responders and the public],” he said. “Broadcasters’ use of 3.0 to communicate emergency alerts and information to the public is a valuable service we can provide to the communities we serve, and we want to make that clear to those attending APCO.”

Of course, having the ability to receive an over-the-air TV signal on a tablet beyond emergency alerting and information is important to both the public and broadcasters. “Obviously, the way people consume video has evolved and will continue to evolve, and the opportunities for us to reach viewers wherever they are is hugely significant for the industry,” he said.

I recently asked John Lawson, executive director of the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance, what it’s been like trying to get ATSC 3.0 advanced emergency alerting off the ground. “We’ve been pushing a rock up a hill,” he said with a bit of weariness in his voice.

Why? It could be the fact that Pearl TV, which includes some of the nation’s largest station groups, Fox Television and News-Press and Gazette have left the alliance. Perhaps, it’s because a corporate tech member from Japan has bailed out. Or, it might be a lack of support from the FCC.

Each has proven to be a challenge for Lawson. But his biggest disappointment—the thing that may have added the tinge of exasperation to his voice, is how the broadcast industry overall has dropped the ball when it comes to advanced emergency alerting.

“By and large, the broadcasters have not lived up to the promises that many of them made to the FCC in 2017 to stand up advanced alerting if the commission approved a voluntary transition to ATSC 3.0,” he said, adding that Capitol Broadcasting Company in Raleigh, N.C., and Sinclair Broadcast Group are notable exceptions.  

While the remaining AWARN Alliance members recently voted to continue as an organization with Lawson as its leader, he’s no Sisyphus.

With the membership’s blessing, Lawson is preparing to push that rock up the hill one more time. But unlike the mythical Sisyphus, Lawson is taking a new route up—one he believes that will take advanced emergency alerting where it needs to go.

This time, Lawson is taking the for-profit, commercial approach. His plan is twofold. Working with a partner like tech manufacturer 6G-Datacast.tv, Lawson hopes to see mobile 3.0 receivers with battery backup power and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities in the homes and cars of millions of people around the country. The idea is the units will receive 3.0 advanced emergency messages and data and rebroadcast them to other devices in the home if the users so choose.

To naysayers who argue Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) messages and cell phones can do the same thing, Lawson points out that rather than helping, the combo can hurt when a fast response on the part of the public is required. When people receive these alerts, they tend to mill about, unnecessarily delaying their response, while they seek to confirm or find more information on their smartphones. 

That phenomenon is tied directly to the 360-character limitation of WEA messages. In contrast 3.0 advanced emergency messages have no such character limits and can, in fact, include rich media like maps with escape routes, other graphics, video and audio from official sources like local emergency managers and more.

Plus, there’s the problem of electrical service to cell towers going down in severe storms and hurricanes, a comparatively rare occurrence at TV transmitter sites hardened with backup generators and days of fuel.

The other piece of the puzzle, Lawson said, is a 24/7 disaster reality channel, something he described as “C-SPAN meets the Weather Channel.” The idea is to use artificial intelligence to scrape public sources of emergency alerts to retrieve the 2,800 or so issued every day. Then using a model similar to Alert FM, which has proven to be a success, deliver the alerts and accompanying rich media from official sources to TV station subscribers via satellite or other means.

Lawson would outfit emergency managers and public safety officials with the tools to aggregate rich media and the means to transmit that content along with alerts to station clients. On the station side, the alerts and rich media would be received and automatically trigger delivery to the public via 3.0.

While he is at the beginning of this journey, Lawson is encouraged after attending Disaster Expo USA 2023 at the Anaheim Convention Center in September where the ideas were well received. Of course, there will be many challenges along the way, but at least he’s had years of experience learning to live with the pain of pushing a rock up a hill. 

ANAHEIM, Calif.—America’s Emergency Network (AEN) has announced that it is working with 6G-Datacast.tv to launch an Advanced Emergency Information service using Next Generation Television based on the ATSC 3.0 standard and an AI-programmed 24/7 “disaster channel” with actual emergency content from around the country. 

AEN and 6G-Datacast.tv are showcasing their collaboration at Disaster Expo USA with demos of how they bring life-saving capabilities to improve emergency preparedness and response.

As part of the collaboration, 6G-Datacast.tv is integrating its low latency CY4 protocol to make ATSC 3.0 battery-powered mobile receivers with Bluetooth, WiFi and USB/HDMI connectivity. These lightweight mobile devices will operate even when cellular networks and the electric grid fail, as they did in the Maui wildfire and many other disasters. 

“We are very happy to be working with 6G-Datacast.tv to leverage NextGen TV/ATSC 3.0 to improve alerting and public safety,” says John Lawson, co-founder and president of AEN, LLC. “6G-Datacast has developed the ATSC 3.0 receiver we’ve been looking for. Battery back-up and connectivity with other devices in a small, mobile form factor are ideal for a resilient warning system. Plus, people can watch free [TV] with it.” 

“6G-Datacast.tv is excited to be working with AEN to execute on public alerting, safety and recovery missions,” said Stephan Sloan a principal in 6G-Datacast.tv. “Madeleine Noland’s leadership at ATSC has prepared the industry to deliver a new level of service to our communities. We have invested in development with ATSC ,and our CY4 protocol provides a low-latency, robust broadcast option for streaming data. Coupled with our portable receiver

America’s Emergency Network and 6G-Datacast.tv 2 with internal antenna and all-day battery power, public safety networks and informed citizens alike have a new, valuable option for alerting, communicating and recovery coordination.” 

Complementary with alerting, AEN-TV will leverage content from emergency managers and public safety agencies to create a 24/7 “disaster channel.” AI will be used to curate content, including CCTV and drone video, from among the approximately 2800 alert messages distributed across the U.S. every day. AEN believes home improvement retailers, generator and battery pack suppliers, insurance companies, utilities, and government agencies will be likely sponsors of the channel. 

At the Disaster Expo USA, September 27-28 at the Anaheim (CA) Convention Center, AEN and 6G-Datacsat.tv will demonstrate their capabilities using a 6G-Datacast receiver and a live ATSC 3.0 datacasting signal of emergency information. 

Related company Alert FM will demo its existing ShakeAlert system, already deployed on the West Coast, to provide earthquake early warning. 

AEN is in booth 772. Lawson is speaking on Thursday, September 28 at 11am PT in Seminar 4. 

WASHINGTON—Representatives from the broadcast industry met with public emergency managers recently to discuss the future of emergency alerting in the new ATSC 3.0 standard (aka “NextGen TV”).

The meeting, held last week at NAB headquarters here is part of a series of roundtables sponsored by the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN), an alliance of broadcasters, government officials and manufacturers tasked with developing the new advanced emergency alerting service for the ATSC 3.0 over the air service. 

The ability of ATSC 3.0 to combine broadcast with IP brings the promise of far more detailed and targeted information that can be relayed to the public during emergencies. This ability for broadcasters—whose transmission facilities have to meet FCC requirements for security and reliability— could make a crucial difference in a world where the kinds of cellular services consumers rely on every day are far more vulnerable and likely to fail, as evidenced by recent storms, including Hurricane Ian.

What kind of information, how it’s presented and how best to relay it to the myriad of devices was among the main topics of discussion at the meeting. Jerald Fritz, Executive Vice President for Strategic and Legal Affairs for ONE Media, a division of Sinclair Broadcast Group, emphasized the importance the broadcast community put on improved mobile reception when developing ATSC 3.0; something that could not be achieved in 1.0.

“What we've now enabled is mobility—we can put it in your tablet, on your laptop, or on your phone,” he said. “That's critical in the emergency informing field.” 

Fritz showed several screenshots showing different layouts of how and what information could be relayed on a TV or mobile device screen, from maps of escape routes to sources of additional information, weather maps, school closings, emergency updates, etc. The plethora of information and how it can be presented can be daunting, however. 

During a demonstration of its emergency alerting app that showcased such features, Kevin Wong with ONE Media discussed how the company has approached its development. 

“There's a lot of potential here to show additional information that you expect to get on the internet, including an augmented experience,” he said. “It's really just a matter of what information is available and making it accessible and organizing it. So we're still working on enhancing the experience to provide more information, making it more accessible.”

Although cord cutting has increased and the number of consumers receiving TV over the air has incrementally grown over the past decade, the vast majority of  consumers still watch via cable and/or broadband, so how do the emergency alerting capabilities of ATSC 3.0 fit into the multichannel and mobile device world of today, if they're not available on pay TV?

“[Broadcasters] are currently talking with the MVPDs (multichannel video program distributors)... to make sure that they're going to be taking the 3.0 service—not just the 1.0 service—to transmit to those folks that have cable systems,” Fritz said. “That's assuming that they have electricity and power to run their television station. Because when power goes out, the cable systems pretty much go out as well on their televisions that work. That's why we believe it's critical to have ATSC 3.0 in mobile devices and laptops and tablets and phones.” 

On that note, despite the lack of ATSC 3.0 compatibility on mobile devices, Fritz pointed to the international focus of the standard and ONE Media’s ongoing work with Saankhya Labs, its chip partner based in India and the potential offered by the world’s second most populous nation. 

“With respect to the cell phone companies, we have decided to do it ourselves, to show what the capabilities are,” Fritz said, pointing to the company’s ongoing development of its Mark One Android-based smartphone it’s developing with Saankhya. “India is conducting broadcast spectrum testing in Bangalore and Delhi right now to show what direct to mobile will look like and we believe that it will be successful, and that success will then manifest itself here in the United States.”

Sulayman Brown, Deputy Coordinator for the Dept. of Emergency Management and Security for Fairfax (Va.) County Gov’t., discussed the evolution of the region’s emergency preparedness efforts through the creation of the National Capitol Notification System that, over the past decade, has streamlined the way local governments in the DMV area alert both their internal departments as well as the general public. As communications from pagers and cellphones have evolved to the sophisticated smartphones of today, the notification system has adapted to those changes. 

Brown noted the increasing value of using social media for emergency communications. “A lot of our messaging is out on social media," he said. “Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of that is now connected to our notification system.”

Brown sees the emergency alerting capabilities through ATSC 3.0 as an important addition to a menu of emergency communications capabilities but is also cognizant of the realities of today’s consumer choices and getting the message to where the consumers are. He also thinks there’s room for improving communication between local broadcasters and emergency officials. 

“Essentially we need better communication about who makes the decisions at the broadcast station,” he said. “Can we get you out to our location where we can walk you through a particular situation? What's our trigger for sending out messages? Is it that big of an emergency so that you feel more comfortable putting that message out? This is the message, so it's got to be trust. I don't know if you have that now.” 

“In a lot of jurisdictions in the National Capital Region, they have a public affairs manager who worked for local stations before so we have that relationship,” he added. “But what I’d like to know is, ‘what do you need from emergency managers?’”

The goal of the roundtables, which will continue in Raleigh and New York in the new year, is to not only provide a tutorial on the emergency alerting capabilities of ATSC 3.0 but to also enhance dialogue between local stations and their local emergency officials to improve coordination during emergencies, as well as use that feedback to improve the design and form of 3.0 alerts. 

The roundtables are helping to open the lines of communication as both broadcasters and government agencies adapt to the evolution of mass media, according to John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance. “We're trying to build relationships,” he said. “We talk about technology, but this is really about relationships, getting to know your counterparts and finding out the best ways to work together.”

WASHINGTON—The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) has announced that more than 60 local TV broadcasters and emergency managers from the Gulf Coast region are due to gather this week to lay the groundwork for the voluntary use of NextGen TV Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) and cement their historic working relationship.

The AWARN New Orleans Roundtable, Nov. 2-3 at public broadcaster WYES’ studio (916 Navarre Ave., New Orleans, La. 70124), will examine how many aspects of the new digital broadcast standard can best serve the public in an emergency.

AWARN is co-hosting the event with the station as well as the Louisiana Broadcasters Association, the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, the Mississippi Association of Broadcasters and the Alabama Broadcasters Association. 

“The AWARN Roundtables are a forum for broadcasters and local alert originators to network and explore ways to work together to deliver geo-targeted, rich media emergency information. Although NextGen TV will be highlighted, the real focus is building relationships,” said AWARN Executive Director John Lawson. 

The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), the Louisiana Broadcasters Association, LG Electronics/Zenith R&D Lab, One Media 3.0, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group, The Weather Company, An IBM Business and WYES are sponsoring the event.

“In addition to our venue host WYES, CEOs of the state broadcaster associations and state and local emergency managers have been terrific partners. And we’re happy that So Vang, vice president of emerging technology at ONE Media 3.0, is coming down to personally brief the group on the breakthrough ATSC 3.0 Advanced Emergency Information app that his team at Sinclair has developed. This will be an eye-opening event,” said Lawson.

Future AWARN Roundtables will be held in Washington, D.C., Dec. 7-8; Raleigh, N.C., Jan. 24-25; and New York City in 2023. The New York City date currently is undetermined. 

Roundtable registration is available online.

LEAWOOD, Kan.—As tornados go, it was rather puny. Then again, a piece of debris striking someone at 100 mph—the wind determined for that particular EF-1 twister—could kill or cause severe injury.

But this column isn’t about the tornado per se. Rather it’s about the experiences of some of the people in my hometown during the event, public safety warnings and NextGen TV. 

First some basics. The tornado formed at about 1 a.m. on June 8, roughly seven miles west of my neighborhood in the city of Lenexa, Kan., and traveled east along a major thoroughfare. By the time it got to about a half mile from my house it was no wider than 125 yards. Continuing east into Missouri, the twister traveled along a path from Kansas City, Mo., to the northeast side of a major interstate intersection called the “Grandview Triangle” where it dissipated. No deaths or injuries were reported.

I was out of town at the time, but my wife reports being sound asleep when a warning tone emanated from her smartphone. Groggy, she assumed it was an Amber Alert, which too often comes in waves about events far away. She then rolled over and went back to sleep, not hearing Johnson County’s tornado sirens—although they functioned properly.

Across the street, my neighbors say they slept through the entire event and didn’t learn of it until the next day. Next door, the neighbors heard the sirens and headed to the basement.

The young man who cuts my grass and lives about a block closer to the twister’s path, heard the alert on his phone and the county’s sirens. He went outside to take a look, determined it wasn’t a false alarm, went inside and headed to the basement. He reports losing cellular and internet service right about then.

I have learned a few lessons from this experience that might benefit broadcasters. First, the time of day  an emergency happens plays a huge role in the effectiveness of efforts to warn the public. If people are asleep, some will keep right on sleeping.

Second, when a mobile phone frequently goes off with an Amber Alert warning—something that seems to happen in spurts about possible abductions many miles—its effectiveness as a tool to convey a warning wanes. It becomes background noise and is easily ignored, especially when someone is sleeping.

Third, layering warnings from broadcast, mobile phones and public sirens increases the chance that some members of the public, like the lawn guy, will receive a warning and take it seriously. In his case, two forms of warning prompted action.

Fourth, it’s human nature to want to confirm the legitimacy of an emergency warning like my lawn guy did by walking outside. John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance, on several occasions, has pointed out to me that one of the first things people do when they receive an emergency alert on their phones is to confirm that it’s real. Typically, they ping a website or call someone to confirm the legitimacy of the warning with the same smartphone. When thousands of people do this in a small footprint they are likely to overwhelm the nearby cell tower with traffic.

As for ATSC 3.0 at this point, it goes without saying that 3.0 advanced emergency warnings can “wake up” NextGen TVs in the homes of people living in the path of a tornado or some other emergency. I suspect that doing so stands a better chance of getting the attention of people as they snooze.

With this capability comes a weighty responsibility for broadcasters however. In an era of cost-cutting and workflow efficiency, will they have someone—not necessarily the station meteorologist—present or who has a hardened link back to the station from home at 1 a.m. to take advantage of this capability and warn people of an impending threat?

Lastly, waking up sets and targeting warnings based on geographical coordinates is great; however, if the public doesn’t own a NextGen TV or, worse yet, owns one and does not know about these capabilities and how to enable them on their end, what good are they?

Broadcasters must waste no time educating the public with PSAs and even by meeting with the people directly in their communities at civic gatherings to inform them of the advanced emergency warning capabilities of NextGen TV. Doing so is fully consistent with broadcasters’ public service obligation—not some self-serving promotional undertaking. It could also save the lives of someone they love. 

A good portion of the ATSC's June NextGen Broadcast Conference dealt with ATSC 3.0 as a wireless data, video and audio delivery technology for vehicles. 

Hosted in Detroit, the event offered a market overview of where vehicle connectivity stands today, the technical ins and outs of what was billed as a “coast-to-coast” 3.0 test across Michigan, as well as a look at key elements needed to support reception in moving vehicles.

Perhaps one of the most valuable pieces of advice to come out of the conference with regard to 3.0 in vehicles was offered by John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance. He urged broadcasters interested in mobile 3.0 to reach out to the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, state and federal transportation agencies and public-private partnerships, such as turnpike authorities, to promote the wireless IP data delivery strengths of the 3.0 standard and educate them about how it could serve their needs to transmit vital data to intelligent vehicles.

Lawson, who attended a gathering of the society in 2018, said the ITS community is coming off a significant loss of spectrum—45 MHz of its 75 MHz in the 5.9 GHz band—reallocated by the FCC for Wi-Fi use. That original 75 MHz allocation was to transmit data—like whether or not a vehicle is moving through an intersection—to intelligent vehicles. The loss of spectrum has left that industry scrambling to create a new ecosystem to support transmission of this sort of vital data.

Now is the time for the Advanced Television Systems Committee, station groups and even individual stations to do the outreach necessary to communicate how 3.0 can play a critical role in that ecosystem. During a phone conversation following the conference, Lawson noted the ITS World Congress will take place in September in Los Angeles and that 3.0 advocates should attend.

The broadcast community should waste no time in contacting government and quasi-governmental transportation authorities as they pick up the pieces from their spectrum loss and make plans for a new wireless ecosystem to support intelligent vehicles. These authorities will be responsible for writing specifications that could include 3.0 as part of the new ITS wireless data delivery ecosystem. They also have the power to set the standards automakers must meet with their own intelligent transportation solutions. 

WASHINGTON—Two local television stations in the nation’s capital will conduct an eight week trial of ATSC 3.0’s advanced emergency warning capabilities, including text-based alerts and rich media, and the workflow needed to support the alerts, said Lane Michaelsen, Group News director at the Sinclair Broadcast Group during a June 23 webinar on NextGen TV alerting. 

WJLA, Sinclair’s ABC affiliate, and WTTG, the Fox O&O, in Washington, D.C., will take part in the trial. As of this moment, no start date has been identified, he said.

“We’ve spoken to the people there [at WTTG], and we’ve obviously spoken to the people at Sinclair to create a test environment so we can create a workflow that we can distribute to our partners—a workflow that we know works,” said Michaelsen.

The trial will occur in four two-week blocks. During the first two weeks, the stations will conduct four scheduled tests per day in four different time periods. These will be text-only alerts. “The idea here is that we hit multiple people on multiple schedules,” he said.

The second two-week block will see the addition of real alerts to the scheduled tests during four different time periods. Once again, these tests will be text-only, said Michaelsen.

The third two-week block will include daily scheduled and real alerts during the four time periods. They will consist of text and limited media. The last two weeks of the trial will see the addition of rich media, including maps and video, he said.

Michaelsen made his presentation during “NextGen TV 201: Advanced Emergency Alerting, News and Information,” a webinar presented by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) in partnership with the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance.

Other speakers included John Lawson, president of Convergence Services and executive director of the AWARN Alliance, Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC, and Jim DeChant, vice president of Technology at News-Press & Gazette. 

Michaelsen discussed the efforts of Sinclair to develop a next-gen emergency alerting workflow. “We want the system to interact with current systems in our newsrooms … because not every single newsroom works on the Avid iNews system, not every newsroom edits with the same platform,” he said.

The goal for the workflow is to not add significantly to the existing workload of producers and reporters. Michaelsen envisions taking the work that is already being done and allowing users to drag and drop it onto a platform that supports advanced emergency alerting. 

Above all, Michaelsen said advanced emergency alerting must put viewers first, giving them the ability to limit alerts to those that are of interest.

“So many alerts come across the producer’s desk every day,” said Michaelsen, “but we want to back up because ultimately this is really about the user—the person sitting at home or the person using their mobile device.”

“We want to make sure that in a sense we are almost partnering with them and not necessarily disrupting their lives,” he said.

Sinclair has begun working with the designers of smart TVs to help them guide consumers through a menu of available warnings as they set up their NextGen TVs. Consumers not only will be able to select the types of alerts, such as tornado warning or flash flood warning, they wish to see but also the level of warnings they wish to see—warning versus watch, for instance. 

The support for location services in NextGen TV will also play an important part in preventing viewers from being bombarded with alerts. “Right now in most television environments, we send out a flood warning, and it doesn’t affect about 95% of the people that get it. It just irritates them,” he said.

For public broadcasters without newsrooms, Michaelsen said there will be opportunities to partner with news-producing broadcasters that support advanced alerting. “These [advanced alerts] would all be pre-programmed so it doesn’t even require anyone to be at your station. It will just pass through,” he said.

SAN DIEGO—As part of the company’s efforts related to advanced emergency alerting (AEA), Verance has announced that it has officially joined the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance. This voluntary, international coalition of technology firms and trade associations work to utilize NEXTGEN TV for AEA and post-alert news and information.

What Verance says it expects to contribute to AEA technology that already assists with providing videos, images, maps and real-time updates is its Aspect watermarking platform, which ensures that metadata and triggers associated with next-gen experiences like AEA can reach 100% of connected TVs across all distribution paths, including ATSC 1.0, 3.0, over-the-air, cable, satellite and OTT services.

“On behalf of our coalition, I am very happy to welcome Verance to the AWARN Alliance,” said John Lawson, AWARN executive director. “Aspect watermarking can play a vital role in fulfilling our mission to deliver AEA to the widest possible audience and enable more lives to be saved during emergency situations.”

Richard Glosser, Verance’s head of business development added: “The power of our combined technologies ensures that critical alerts and ongoing information will reach the right households at the right time, including in today’s ATSC 1.0 broadcast environment.”

NEW YORK & ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Fox Television Stations is the newest member of the Advanced Warning and Response Network, making it the first major television O&O station group as part of the coalition, per the official announcement.

AWARN is a coalition of commercial and public broadcasters, consumer electronics makers, tech companies and trade associations that are developing voluntary advanced emergency messaging capability that uses ATSC 3.0.

“Our stations are dedicated to serving their communities, and nothing is more important than giving people the information they need to stay safe in emergencies,” said Richard Friedel, executive vice president of engineering, operations and technology for Fox. “We support the Alliance’s broader mission to develop a framework for providing emergency information beyond the initial alert. ATSC 3.0 will enable Fox Television Stations to use its local news assets as never before, and we are happy to add our voice to that initiative.”

AWARN has also announced that it plans to launch a series of roundtable discussions with TV news leaders with the goal of developing a voluntary framework for packaging a TV station’s news assets and using ATSC 3.0 to engage with viewers across multiple devices.

LAS VEGAS—Advanced emergency alerting as part of ATSC 3.0 demonstrated at the recently concluded 2019 NAB Show has evolved into a tightly knit system, not restricted simply to the delivery of imminent threat warnings but also conveyance of useful emergency information.

However, on the consumer side of the equation, the show underscored that there is still work to be done. “At this stage in the game—and we are pre-commercial launch—not all 3.0 sets are fully loaded with software,” said Ed Czarnecki, senior director, Strategy & Government Affairs, at Digital Alert Systems.

A case in point was the glass-to-glass demonstration of ATSC 3.0 by Hitachi Kokusai Electric Comark. “We had some canned EAS messages in the [Digital Alert Systems] DASDEC that we were pushing to the Triveni Digital GuideBuilder XM,” explained Tim Hosmer, director of Comark Digital Services.

“What we discovered was that on our Samsung TV, the receiver app was not able to find those EAS messages,” he said. “So we could see them on the output of our [Triveni Digital] StreamScope Verifier but not on the TV.”

However, the inability of the set to recognize these messages says more about where 3.0 is in the process of becoming productized by consumer electronics manufacturers than anything else, said Czarnecki.

“This points to where the [consumer electronics] industry will have to go next in terms of harmonizing specifications and approaches for the actual display of the information on consumer TV sets,” said Czarnecki. “It’s not a bad place to be, given we are still pre-market [launch of 3.0 sets].”

Recommended practices defining what devices should do with the Advanced Emergency Alerting information payload are expected later this year from the Consumer Technology Association, he added.

On the broadcast side of the equation, the 2019 NAB Show pointed to the success vendors are having in developing interoperable systems to support AEA. “That’s one of the big things we are trying to show at the NAB Show this year,” said Czarnecki.

To that end, Comark featured a “glass-to-glass” 3.0 demonstration in its booth originating with a Hitachi DK-H200 studio camera through an all-in-one 3.0 hardware travel rack, including the CDS powered by TITAN Live (ATEM) encoder; Triveni GuideBuilder XM with ROUTE server option; Digital Alert Systems DASDEC feeding EAS messages; Enensys ATSC Scheduler; Triveni StreamScope and StreamScope Verifier; Comark EXACT V2 3.0 exciter; and Comark QoS 1000 RT layer monitor receiver.

UniSoft, working with several partners, including IBM’s The Weather Company, also transmitted live, over-the-air 3.0 with an emphasis on Advanced Emergency Alerting information.

Based on its UniRack, a Next-Gen TV station-in-a-box, the UniSoft system played out an HD signal from a BroadStream OASYS player, inserted Nielsen and Verance Aspect watermarking with a Linear Acoustic Aero 2000, encoded an HEVC stream with an ATEM TITAN encoder with DASH packager, and pushed the DASH segments to an S&T ATCaster Signaling Server where emergency information and alerts from a Digital Alert Systems’ DASDEC were received.

“The result of the ATCaster is several multicasts, which go straight to the scheduler that encapsulates them in ALP [ATSC Link-layer Protocol] packets and generates physical layer pipes through the STL to our preferred exciter, which is a Pro Television Exciter,” said UniSoft CTO Guy Hadland.

For the AEA demo, UniSoft transmitted on channel 24.2—one of three 3.0 channels, the others being a UHD channel and another HD channel—using a 10W transmitter from GatesAir. Samsung, LG Electronics and Sony television sets around the show floor, including those in the UniSoft and Digital Alert Systems booths, received the transmission.

For UniSoft’s demo, a Sony ATSC 3.0 consumer set, connected to a gateway receiver running an AEA receiver application, detected the presence of emergency information in the 3.0 signaling and pulled up radar scans of a hypothetical tornado warning affecting the Boston area provided by The Weather Company. Using the remote control, a viewer could request additional related emergency information, such as what to do in a tornado to stay safe, or dismiss the warning entirely.

“The AEA [Advanced Emergency Alerting] message is a very low-level [ATSC 3.0] service. It is one of the very first things a TV set receives and processes,” explained Czarnecki. “The receiver app is triggered by that AEA message and displays the text and—also through a feature like this—accesses the multimedia files that are being downloaded.”

The demo reflected the efforts of the emergency alerting community to develop the emergency information capabilities of ATSC 3.0, which permits viewers to choose to view rich media and textual information or dismiss the alert and continue watching regular programming without distraction.

“We have strongly encouraged all the parties to reposition the thinking on AEA, from Advanced Emergency Alerting to Advanced Emergency Information,” said Czarnecki. “The information being the broad spectrum of urgent information, community-related information that a broadcaster can present to its audience. That’s really taken ahold. That’s exciting.”

John Lawson, executive direction of the Advanced Warning and Response Network, delivered much the same message in the AWARN booth. “One direction we are taking is to go a step further and not just focus on alerting, but focus on aggregating a whole range of local news and information content that can be made available,” said Lawson.

This strategy is consistent with the desires of TV news managers and the emergency management community that have told Lawson that alerts should “only be used for the most severe and urgent” warnings, especially if the 3.0-based TV wakeup function is used, he said.

AEA Manager, a new product from Triveni Digital, powered the AWARN demo, said Ralph Bachofen, VP of sales and marketing of the company.

“It’s a studio tool that allows a high-level, canned interface for such alerting [AEA alerting] where you can just add information that will be encoded and put into that [AEA] environment,” he said.

Representatives of NAB’s PILOT initiative approached Triveni Digital about building the product to make it easy for newsrooms to leverage the emergency information aspect of AEA, thus providing 3.0 viewers with access to a wide variety of text- and rich-media-based content, such as evacuation routes, shelter locations and what to do in tornado, he added.

To demonstrate what is possible, Lawson showed how emergency information can be conveyed via 3.0 following an emergency. “It could be road closures or where to find generators,” he said. Eventually a small on-screen icon could show up on the screen to alert viewers that such information is available and give them access to it.

“If they don’t want to interrupt their programming, they don’t have to,” he said. “But if they click on it, there is an aggregation of content from public sources [and] non-profits. It could be weather, traffic [or] school closings.”

There is even a provision for a revenue model to sponsor this type of information that can be used “to fund continual improvement of the alerting function,” he said.

Another focus at the AWARN booth was the user experience (UX) of alerting. While still under development, the alert UX—designed by a creative executive from CNN—conveys in an instant that an alert is legitimate and issued by a bona fide source so that viewers react without delay, he said.

“They delay because they seek more information; they seek confirmation. It’s called milling. If we can cut that down, it will help,” Lawson explained.

Leveraging the geo-targeting capabilities with 3.0 should also help viewers to pay attention when an alert is issued. “Over-alerting is the biggest problem in alerting,” he said “With geo-targeting you can reduce that.”

To illustrate the power of geo-targeting, Lawson showed a map from the Santa Barbara (Calif.) County Office of Emergency Management. It illustrated various debris flows stemming from rains that followed the Thomas Fire of 2017. “It’s very important to put ‘You Are Here’ on the map,” he said. “We can do that, but there are still some implementation decisions [to be made].”

While such decisions remain as does the development of recommended practices for an AEA-enabled receiver app, there was a feeling of general accomplishment at the NAB Show about ATSC 3.0 and more specifically about the status of AEA.

That became evident to Czarnecki during NAB Show setup. “We put it all together, and things just worked,” he said. “We are taking theory into practice in very short order and showing people that ATSC 3.0 is ready for market—at least in terms of what we are doing—ready for market today.”

For a comprehensive source of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see ourATSC3 silo.

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance is expanding its mission with the next-generation of emergency alerting to place greater emphasis on news as a source of potentially life-saving information.

“The alliance’s steering committee sees AWARN evolving to become more newsroom-centric,” says John Lawson, AWARN executive director.

While delivering official alerts, such as EAS and EAN notifications, will remain the primary focus of AWARN, the advanced capabilities of ATSC 3.0 enable TV newsrooms to deliver a wider range of emergency-related information, such as evacuation routes, the location of emergency shelters or even where fresh drinking water and plywood are available, he says.

Television stations devote enormous resources to newsgathering that can be leveraged to better inform the public via the advanced features of 3.0 when emergencies arise, he says.

The decision to expand AWARN grew out of a series of workshops and focus groups with emergency managers as well as TV broadcasters from three different regions of the country, says Lawson.

However, both groups expressed some concern about overusing 3.0’s enhanced warning features, such as the TV wake-up function, geo-targeting and rich media, to disseminate emergency information. Doing so might fatigue the public and ultimately desensitize audiences to bona fide alerts, causing them to hesitate to take action or ignore warnings altogether.

“The emergency managers see the best use of ATSC 3.0 alerting being reserved for imminent threat alerting, something that is severe and urgent,” says Lawson. Those from the TV community concurred and said voluntary arrangements are needed with emergency managers about what does and does not qualify for an imminent threat alert.

The concept of an on-screen icon for 3.0 viewers to inform them of a possible threat—rather than a banner alert—was discussed. This approach could give viewers control over emergency information, allowing them to click to learn more or to dismiss and disregard.

“The point is to develop a system to deliver the rare alert as well as a service that is capable of delivering more content to consumers on a voluntary basis,” he says.

Interest in taking advantage of 3.0 to deliver this type of information has come from both news-producing and non-news-producing stations as well as commercial and public broadcasters.

“Some stations see this as a way to supplement their news reporting on their main channel by using a digital subchannel,” says Lawson. “Public stations without a regular newscast view it as a way to provide highly localized, critical information to their communities.”

The next step is to organize a series of conversations with TV news directors and other news executives at station groups and stations “to develop a framework to begin using 3.0 for a broader range of information that would be valuable for the communities they serve,” says Lawson.

Part of those discussions will center on the extent to which TV stations rely upon local public authorities for information versus their own reporting. Lawson draws the analogy to the National Weather Service and weather data and graphics vendors.

“There are third-party commercial companies that package weather information and graphics despite the National Weather Service and NOAA offering massive amounts of public data,” he says.

The AWARN steering committee has directed Lawson to establish an operational framework, such as recommended practices, for newsrooms to rely upon to communicate emergency information to their audiences via 3.0, he says.

“We are also hopeful that expanding our footprint to look at emergency information beyond alerting will help us grow our membership,” he adds.

The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) remains one of the clearest and strongest use cases for Next Generation Television. It was a key factor in the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of voluntary transmission with ATSC 3.0 [nearly one year ago]. And it’s the platform for a renewed relationship between broadcasters and the public to improve disaster resilience.

The AWARN Alliance continues to grow and evolve. Members include commercial and public broadcasters who reach 90 percent of U.S. households, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Consumer Technology Association, LG Electronics, and tech companies in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. But many other industry players remain on the sidelines.

The Alliance works closely with our partners who are building the technical architecture for advanced alerting, including ATSC’s AEA I-Team, NAB PILOT, Pearl TV, One Media and the CTA. In this division of labor, the Alliance is answering the “what,” while our technical partners are answering the “how.” Together, we are creating the world’s most advanced alerting system.

Toward that end, AWARN is developing a user experience (UX) style guide based on social science and usability research. So far, we have conducted focus groups with alerting authorities for 26 million people in Southern California and Arizona. For our next focus group at the New York City Emergency Operations Center, TV news professionals from the network stations and WNET, one of our public media members, are invited. We hope to test usability with end-users in 2019.

The AWARN Steering Committee has been formed to help guide the Alliance, which is managed by my firm, Convergence Services, Inc. The committee quickly has become the forum for holistically examining the major issues around the launch of advanced alerting. Convening cross-industry working groups to address these issues, along with UX development, has emerged as a focus of the Alliance for next year. Major questions include:

• Where does official alerting end and station news and weather begin?
• If the most urgent alerts should be automatically passed through stations, as some broadcasters have suggested, what sort of voluntary agreements are needed between stations and alerting authorities?
• Smart industries avoid regulation by providing voluntary services; how can voluntary AWARN preclude any future perceived need to regulate ATSC 3.0 alerting?
• As pressure builds on streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu to provide local emergency messages, can ATSC 3.0 home gateways and smart TV’s provide a hybrid alerting solution?
• What are appropriate guidelines among broadcasters, receiver makers, and emergency managers for “waking-up” devices from standby mode?

The AWARN Alliance is bringing together broadcast executives, news and digital directors, emergency managers, device makers, and tech vendors for resolving these issues. We appeal to all organizations seeking success in the Next Gen TV ecosystem to become part of the solution. After all, if we can use ATSC 3.0 to send a geo-targeted, multimedia alert to any enabled consumer device under the worst possible conditions, we can use it to send anything.

As one of our members has said, “If you’re not at the table, you’re on it.”

For more information, visit our website. 

John M. Lawson is executive director of the AWARN Alliance and president of Convergence Services, Inc.

For comprehensive coverage on ATSC 3.0, visit TV Technology's ATSC3 silo.

Advanced emergency warning is on the way thanks to a 3.0 commitment from major broadcasters

Call it coincidence. Call it synchronicity. Call it whatever you want, but today three items crossed my desk that left me shaking my head.

First, Reuters’ Brian Snyder reported in “Lack of power, phones hampering rescue efforts after Hurricane Michael,” that hundreds of volunteers from Texas had headed to Florida to help locate more than 1,100 people—mostly in Panama City— who have gone missing following Hurricane Michael.

One of the leaders of the effort, however, told Reuters that spotty cell phone coverage in the aftermath of the hurricane has impeded the effort. Further, about 155,000 homes and businesses were without power, and 70 percent of customers in four rural counties in the Florida Panhandle remained without electricity as of Oct. 17. The day before, the government reported about 61 percent of cell sites in Bay County, Fla., were down, the story said.

Second, on the same day, TV Technology published my online op-ed “Hurricane Florence in A 5G World.”

In a nutshell, I made that case that in a 5G world a devastating hurricane or other disaster, restoration of wireless networks would be even harder than it is today.

I also argued that the advanced emergency warnings made possible by ATSC 3.0 and AWARN should be made available to wireless customers on their phones–whether that comes about through a deal struck by the broadcast and wireless industries or a federal mandate.

The third thing to happen on the same day was an announcement out of the NAB Show New York by major broadcast networks and station groups throwing their support behind the Next-Gen TV standard and committing to the introduction of ATSC 3.0–a significant step in a broadcast future where such decisions are voluntary.

Fox Television Stations, NBC- and Telemundo-owned stations, Univision, Pearl TV, a consortium of eight major station groups, and SpectrumCo, which includes mega-station groups Sinclair Broadcast Group and Nexstar Media Group, among others announced a collaborative effort and support for the launch of 3.0.

A joint announcement released by these broadcasters predicted 3.0 to be broadly launched by individual stations in 2020 as Next-Gen-enabled TVs hit retail stores.

In my mind, the thread that ties these separate items together is a simple idea: enhanced emergency alerting is on the way to the American public–regardless of the resiliency or lack thereof of cell sites and wireless networks.

In the not too distant future, a group like the one from Texas looking for unaccounted-for hurricane victims will be able to work with local broadcasters leveraging their AWARN rich-media capability to push photos, descriptions of the missing and other relevant information to the public.

Wireless companies could do their part by setting up Cells on Wheels (COWS), Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS) and generators on trucks (Goats) to reestablish coverage, while friends and neighbors of the unaccounted-for could direct those who have survived to relief centers where they could find cell phones to contact loved ones.

Who knows whether or not this exact scenario is the one that makes the most sense? But what is apparent is that AWARN can play a vital role and that major broadcasters are now committed to its rollout via 3.0.

For comprehensive coverage on ATSC 3.0, visit TV Technology's ATSC3 silo.

COWS and COLTS and Goats, oh my! No Dorothy, this isn’t Oz. It’s the Carolinas and Georgia as Hurricane Florence bore down on its way to landfall.

An interesting article by Angela Moscaritolo in PC Magazine online, “How Mobile Carriers Are Responding to Hurricane Florence,” described the steps carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile were taking to prepare for the aftermath of the hurricane.

She wrote: “…Verizon said it’s readying a fleet of mobile equipment—including Cells on Wheels (COWS), Cells on Light Trucks (COLTS), and generators on a trailer (Goats)—which can be rolled into hard-hit areas in need of extra network capacity.” The other carriers were taking similar steps, the article said.

According to the FCC report on outages as of this writing (Sept. 18), 4.1 percent of cell sites in affected counties in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and North Carolina were out of service. That’s down from 10.7 percent on Sept. 15, which is impressive. However, 30 or more percent remained down as of Sept. 18 in North Carolina’s Columbus, Onslow and Pender counties.

No doubt COWS, COLTS and Goats were being used to breach the gap in coverage.

But what will happen in a 5G world where massive MIMO antennas are deployed throughout the nation affixed to telephone poles and other structures numbering in the hundreds of thousands or more?

Even though the damage wrought on the cell sites in the areas affected by Florence was minimal compared to other storms, such as Super Storm Sandy, 670,000 people in North Carolina and 59,000 in South Carolina were left in the dark according to a Newsweek story citing Duke Energy as of Sept. 16. It’s hard to imagine how COWS, COLTS and Goats could possibly help in a 5G world with so many antennas.

Of course, there will be no magic switch thrown that abruptly changes over cell infrastructure and consumer phones from 4G to 5G. A transition will take place during which a power outage created by a calamity may take down large swaths of 5G antennas, but 4G service and dual radio phones will remain.

But what about that time beyond the transition when 4G service has all but evaporated?

Fortunately for the public, broadcasters will remain on the air distributing critical lifesaving information during emergencies. According to the FCC damage report, 42 of 45 TV stations reporting remained on the air in the wake of the storm. Nearly one million more residents in the Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh areas tuned into local newscasts on broadcast TV stations the week of the storm than the previous week as Hurricane Florence approached the East Coast and made landfall in the Carolinas, according to data from ratings measurement service Nielsen.

Imagine how much better stations could serve the public during future hurricanes and other dangers if cell phones were equipped with ATSC 3.0 receivers that fully support enhanced warnings delivered via AWARN.

One can only hope that wireless companies and broadcasters put aside turf wars for the sake of public safety, or in the absence of magnanimity, that regulators take the needed steps to enhance emergency communications nationwide by one day mandating 3.0 receivers in wireless handsets.

WASHINGTON—The latest public safety organization to join the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Advisory Committee it the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. AWARN, which is based on ATSC 3.0, is designed to provide new capabilities for disaster warning and recovery information for the American public.

The AWARN Advisory Committee provides technical and operational input to the AWARN Alliance, a cross-industry coalition that is developing the new alerting system. Homeland Security joins the FEMA, the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, the National Weather Service and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, all of which joined the Advisory Committee last summer.

The AWARN Alliance, using ATSC 3.0, is working on a system that can deliver geo-targeted, rich-media emergency messages to enabled consumer devices, including 4K UHD TVs, tablets, smartphones and connected cars.

DHS S&T conducts basic and applied research, development, demonstration, testing and evaluation activities, which John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance, said will be used to support research into the social science of alerting and human response to help develop AWARN.

The AWARN Alliance is expected to begin developing an end-to-end AWARN technical solution in 2018, with input from the Advisory Committee. The stated goal is to have a beta version of AWARN alerting available for early adopter television stations that launch Next Gen TV transmission in 2019.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo.

ARLINGTON, VA.—A T-Mobile white paper characterizing ATSC 3.0 and its advanced emergency warning capabilities as “inferior” drew fire Sept. 14 from the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance.

The wireless carrier’s document, submitted Sept. 11 as an ex parte communications to the FCC “denigrates the potential for ATSC 3.0 in advanced alerting,” said the AWARN response filed with the agency.

“ATSC 3.0 will not enhance public safety and emergency message delivery but instead would be an inferior platform compared to the well-established wireless network,” the T-Mobile white paper said.

The wireless company made the assertion as part of the case it was making against an FCC mandate to include ATSC 3.0 receivers and antennas in cell phones and other wireless devices.

In its response, the AWARN Alliance called the T-Mobile filing “irrelevant” because it “repeatedly and expressly [has] made clear that it does not seek a [ATSC 3.0] tuner mandate in fixed or mobile devices.”

While T-Mobile claims the superiority of its wireless network to convey emergency communications, its own FCC filing in another matter says otherwise, the response said.

In January, the wireless company and other industry players “made clear the limitations” of their networks with respect to improving Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) in a filing related to the FCC’s Alerting Paradigm Notice of Proposed Rule Making, the response said.

Penned by AWARN Alliance Executive Director John Lawson, the AWARN letter recited the table of contents in the January T-Mobile filing—with items such as “the issue of geo-targeting requires further study” and “WEA is not an appropriate means for transmitting earthquake early warning alerts”—which it said illustrated company’s “position on needed improvements to wireless alerting.”

“The reality is that ATSC 3.0 provides the building blocks to make the improvements to public alerting that T-Mobile says are not possible, realistic, or needed on its network,” Lawson said in the letter.

The response laid out the advantages AWARN as part of ATSC 3.0 brings to conveying emergency information to the public, including delivery of geo-targeted rich-media alerts to fixed, mobile and handheld devices.

It also used data from the FCC’s own Disaster Information Reporting System to compare the resiliency of broadcast and cell phone networks in the wake of Hurricane Irma.

Commission data revealed on Sept. 11 that 27.4 percent of cell towers in Florida were reported out of service. In hard-hit counties, 50 percent or more were out. “In Monroe County, which included the Florida Keys and falls inside the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale designated market area (DMA), over 80 percent of cell towers were reported out of service,” the AWARN response said.

However, for Sept. 11 and 12 the FCC data showed “just four (4) television stations in the whole of Florida were reported out of service,” the response said.

“In summary, T-Mobile is offering the Commission the worst of both worlds,” the response said. “Not only is it opposing improvements to WEA’s established by the Commission, it also disparages the advantages of ATSC 3.0 advanced alerting before it is even launched,” the alliance response said.

WASHINGTON—The Consumer Technology Association is joining the Advanced Warning and Response Network. CTA will collaborate with the AWARN Alliance and its Advisory Committee in the second half of the year to focus on technical and operational details of the advance alerting system.

The AWARN Alliance is creating a system that can deliver geo-targeted, rich-media emergency messages to a wide range of devices compatible with the emerging television transmission system known as “ATSC 3.0,” to include 4K Ultra HD television sets, tablets, smartphones, and connected cars. AWARN alerts will provide a major upgrade to the alerting systems now available to the American public.

Television broadcasters and consumer technology companies are planning for the voluntary adoption of Next Gen TV transmission, based on the ATSC 3.0 technical standard, pending approval by the Federal Communications Commission.

“Having CTA assume a leading role in the AWARN Alliance is a major step forward for advanced emergency alerting. CTA represents the device makers that are essential to creating the Next Gen TV ‘ecosystem’ that is the backbone for delivering the new alerts. CTA also brings enormous technical and operational know-how in helping us create the voluntary roadmap to an end-to-end system,” said John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance.

And from CTA President and CEO Gary Shapiro: “The AWARN Alliance represents the market-based innovation that CTA embraces,” said CTA President and CEO Gary Shapiro. “CTA and the Alliance have already joined forces with the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and America’s Public Television Stations (APTS) in requesting the FCC adopt minimal new rules for the voluntary implementation of Next Gen TV. We are happy to extend that support to help bring to life one of the key public benefits of Next Gen TV: advanced emergency alerting with AWARN.”

Next Gen TV was launched in South Korea on May 31 and is on track for initial launches in the U.S. in the 2018-19 timeframe, assuming that the FCC rulemaking concludes this year as expected.

Examples of the rich media alerts enabled by the AWARN system include photos, surveillance video, storm tracks, inundation maps, evacuation routes, airborne chemical plume models, and safety instructions. The system also can provide shelter locations, hospital wait times, and other recovery information after a disaster, even if cellular networks and the electric grid are down. In addition, the system can deliver Blue Alerts and safety information such as highway hazards.

The AWARN Alliance membership includes commercial and public broadcasters who reach over 85 percent of U.S. households, the National Association of Broadcasters, LG Electronics, the Interactive Television Alliance, and a growing number of U.S. and Korean technology companies and service providers.

A new AWARN Advisory Committee of major alert originators was just announced. The Committee includes The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National Weather Service, and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials.

Members of the AWARN Alliance, as of July 18, 2017:

Broadcasters (Commercial)
Capitol Broadcasting Company
Pearl TV*
Sinclair Broadcast Group

Broadcasters (Public)
Kentucky Educational Television
KPBS/California State University-San Diego
UNC-TV/University of North Carolina
WKAR/Michigan State University
WNET/New York

Technology Companies
Aircode
Airwavz
LG Electronics/Zenith
Lokita Solutions/DigiCap
ONE Media
Monroe Electronics/Digital Alert Systems
Triveni Digital

Associations
Consumer Technology Association
Interactive Television Alliance
National Association of Broadcasters

Service Providers
AEA Implementation Team
Convergence Services, Inc.
MHz Networks
Wiley Rein, LLC

* Pearl TV is a business organization of U.S. broadcast companies whose membership, comprising more than 220 network-affiliated TV stations, consists of nine of the largest broadcast companies in America including: Cox Media Group, the E.W. Scripps Company, Graham Media Group, Hearst Television Inc., Meredith Local Media Group, Nexstar Media Group, Raycom Media and Tegna.

WASHINGTON—The nation’s largest originators of emergency alerts have come together to advise the industry group behind the Advanced Warning and Response Network. Designed to work synergistically with existing alerting systems, AWARN will provide major new capabilities to improve disaster warning and recovery information for the American public.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, the National Weather Service, and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials have joined the new AWARN Advisory Committee to provide technical and operational input to the AWARN Alliance.

By leveraging the powerful new features of next-generation broadcasting, the AWARN Alliance is creating a system that can deliver geo-targeted, rich-media emergency messages to a wide range of enabled consumer devices, including 4K UHD TVs, tablets, smart phones and even connected cars. Television broadcasters and consumer technology companies are planning for the voluntary adoption of Next-Gen TV transmission, based on the new ATSC 3.0 technical standard, pending approval by the Federal Communications Commission, expected later this year.

“Our goal in developing AWARN is to create the world’s most advanced emergency alerting system, and Next-Gen TV provides the tools to do that,” said John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance. “Our public safety partners will help us define how to use those tools to create messages that save lives and speed recovery,” he said.

“Without broadcasters, AMBER Alert would not be the successful system we have today. Once again, broadcasters will enable the growth of AMBER Alerts and enhance the current alerting system by adopting new technology,” said Robert Lowery Jr., vice president of the Missing Children Division of the NCMEC. “Alerts through ATSC 3.0 will provide rich, useful information to the public, whom law enforcement depends on to be their eyes and ears during the most critical child abductions. We are looking forward to working with AWARN to help define and implement these next-generation protocols.”

NWS Meteorologist Mike Gerber recognizes the promise of advanced emergency alerting with ATSC 3.0. “The National Weather Service is pleased to serve as a technical adviser on the AWARN Advisory Committee as we work collectively to build a Weather-Ready Nation,” he said.

Examples of the rich media alerts enabled by the AWARN system include photos, surveillance video, storm tracks, inundation maps, evacuation routes, road hazards, airborne chemical plume models and safety instructions. AWARN can provide post-event information, such as shelter locations, hospital wait times and other recovery notifications—even if cellular networks and the electric grid are down. AWARN may also deliver Blue Alerts and other law enforcement messages.

APCO International is the world’s oldest and largest organization of public safety communications professionals, including those at Public Safety Answering Points who issue local emergency alerts. FEMA manages the current Emergency Alert System, including the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. NCMEC issues AMBER missing child alerts in cooperation with state and local law enforcement agencies. The National Weather Service issues severe weather alerts, accounting for 90 percent of EAS activations each year.

The AWARN Alliance membership includes commercial and public broadcasters who reach over 85 percent of U.S. households, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Consumer Technology Association, the Interactive Television Alliance, and a growing number of U.S. and Korean technology companies and service providers.

AWARN Alliance and Advisory Committee members plan to convene working groups in the second half of the year. The Alliance’s goal is to have a beta version of AWARN alerts available for early adopter television stations that launch Next-Gen TV transmission in 2018.

Members of the AWARN Alliance, as of July 7, 2017
Broadcasters (Commercial)
Capitol Broadcasting Company
Pearl TV
Sinclair Broadcast Group

Broadcasters (Public)
Kentucky Educational Television
KPBS/California State University-San Diego
UNC-TV/University of North Carolina
WKAR/Michigan State University
WNET/New York

Technology Companies
Aircode
Airwavz
LG Electronics/Zenith
Lokita Solutions/DigiCap
ONE Media
Monroe Electronics/Digital Alert Systems
Triveni Digital

Trade Association
Consumer Technology Association
Interactive Television Alliance
National Association of Broadcasters

Service Providers
AEA Implementation Team (ATSC)
Convergence Services, Inc.
MHz Networks
Wiley Rein, LLC

The ATSC 3.0 (aka ”Next Gen TV”) standard holds the potential to not only vastly improve the television viewing experience and expand programming opportunities, but also enhance emergency communications capabilities and create new operational capabilities for stations. Advanced Emergency Alerting is one such capability that is very much in the best interest of broadcasters, their audiences, and emergency managers.

Enhanced emergency information distribution is one of the major enhanced capabilities and potential benefits of Next-Gen TV. AEA in ATSC 3.0 will be much more than the current EAS in place, and much more than even “alerting”—providing a powerful tool to provide targeted emergency information of any type to TV audiences.

WHAT IS ATSC 3.0 ADVANCED EMERGENCY ALERTING?
How is AEA different from the current emergency alert system? Imagine—for example—the ability to provide targeted audiences with emergency information about a school lockdown, school district closures, traffic emergencies or other local disturbances— exactly the type of local urgent information that your audiences can use, but is also the kind of information that is NOT be part of an EAS message.

AEA allows emergency alerting to be enhanced with graphical and geotargeting capabilities

Imagine the ability to take an intrusive EAS event that would normally interrupt the audio of your programming and impose a crawl on screen, but send it out as AEA message;that is less intrusive to your audience, does not interrupt programming, allows the viewer to choose what info they want to see, and provide rich content and added value to your audiences.

Now imagine the ability to geotarget this type of emergency information, supplement it with graphics, video, and even incorporate your station’s live stream of coverage of the event. All of this would occur, without disrupting normal broadcast programming.

This next-generation emergency information capability provides the potential for a range of capabilities offered by television broadcasters to fixed, mobile and portable consumer devices that support these features, including:

●Audience targeting, ranging from the general public to non-public restricted messaging to specific groups (such as first responders or other organizations).
●Flexible alert messaging capability, sufficient to handle virtually any form of emergency information, ranging from all hazards public alerting to narrowly targeted urgent messaging for a smaller defined audience, and even to specific messaging for first responder functions.
●Location targeting that will allow compatible receivers to monitor alerts that can be addressed to specific geocodes, polygons or circles, essentially meaning that an alert can be targeted as widely as the entire broadcast area, or as narrowly as receivers in a very specific set of coordinates.
●Multimedia capabilities, allowing ATSC 3.0-enabled receivers to receive and display graphics, photos, maps, video, and other assets as part of the emergency information.
●Alert update and cancellation features;
●Alert priority settings;
●Parameter, to awaken compatible receivers when in standby or sleep mode, and
●Multilingual support, providing the prospect for broadcast viewers to select their language of choice for receiving emergency information.

The alerting capability in Next-Gen TV will provide enhanced next-gen emergency information capabilities for TV stations to reach the public. This capability will provide the basis for such initiatives as those promoted by the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance, a voluntary coalition of commercial and public broadcasters, consumer electronics and broadcast technology companies, national trade groups, and service providers who have come together to develop and deploy this ATSC 3.0-based emergency alerting capability; and it’s already been initiated over-the-air at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, N.C. under an experimental license.

THE ATSC 3.0 STANDARDS FOR AEA
Advanced Emergency Alerting is in fact drawn from features across the ATSC 3.0 suite of standards. Key components supporting Advanced Emergency Alerting are found within A/321 System Discovery and Signaling; A/324 Scheduler/Studio to Transmitter Link; A/331 Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization and Error Protection; A336 Content Recovery in Redistribution Scenarios; A/338 Companion Devices; A/342 Audio; and A/344 Application Runtime Environment. Below, we’ll discuss two of these standards in a bit of detail.

A/321 (System Discovery and Signaling) describes the ATSC 3.0 bootstrap, which is the initial discovery and entry point in the ATSC 3.0 waveform. The bootstrap is the most robust part of the transmission signal, containing 3 symbols each with 8 bits. In the bootstrap is a “wakeup” field which—if enabled—would rouse the ATSC 3.0 television receiver from standby or sleep mode if an urgent emergency message is accompanied by a “wakeup” request.

A/331 (Signaling, Delivery, Synchronization and Error Protection) defines the service signaling and IP delivery of a wide range of services and content, including electronic service guides, app-based services, linear audio-video services, and AEA. A specialized emergency messaging approach was needed for ATSC 3.0, tailored for this broadcast environment but also flexible enough to tackle a broad range of messaging requirements, including international (ATSC in an international standards body), multilingual and multimedia capabilities.

The AEA message format proposed by Monroe Electronics is now part of the ATSC A/331 proposed standard, with valuable contributions by fellow ATSC members. The AEA message itself is an XML-based format for ATSC 3.0 urgent message transmission. These XML-based messages are contained within an Advanced Emergency Alert Table (AEAT), which is one instance of low-level service (LLS) info defined in A/331. The AEAT can contain one or more AEA messages. 

The AEA capability in ATSC 3.0 will support a broad range of urgent information— far beyond the scope and abilities of today’s EAS—for emergency information to the public, as well as restricted messages to closed groups (which could include first responders). The AEA capability native to ATSC 3.0 supports a wide range of multimedia content, including cached or live media, multiple languages, and features useful for app developers on mobile, portable and fixed ATSC 3.0 receivers. The AEA was designed to handle the unique content and alert message formats in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Korea and other ATSC countries.

For TV broadcasters, the next-generation ATSC 3.0 standard will allow station-driven emergency information to be integrated into a broad range of services, offering viewers the potential for individually-tailored alerts and emergency information over a portfolio of products (TV, web, mobile, etc.).

COMPARING EAS & ATSC 3.0 AEA
Conventional EAS is not likely to be going away any time soon, and ATSC 3.0 will support both EAS and AEA capabilities. In the U.S., we presume that FCC regulations requiring stations to carry the Presidential EAN alert, NPT and monthly tests (RMT) will mean that TV stations will continue to present an on-screen banner crawl for visual display of EAS messages, plus the EAS audio would likely remain part of the main audio track as defined in A/342.

However, AEA may provide a means to encourage TV stations to provide more emergency alerts in a way that will be more attractive and usable for both the station and its audience. Some EAS messages, for example, that TV stations typically would not air could be provided as a less intrusive AEA message. A severe thunderstorm warning, for example, is something that is not typically aired by TV stations as EAS, but could be presented as an AEA message—and the user can decide whether or not they want to access the information.

EAS and AEA may evolve into a complementary relationship, where the conventional EAS alert could be accompanied by an AEA from the station, with more instructions, maps, graphics and information that the conventional EAS just cannot support.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT PRACTICAL STEPS?
An ecosystem has already emerged across industry to bring ATSC 3.0 AEA capabilities to reality. The ATSC Implementation Team provides a venue for industry discussions of issues related to implementation of AEA, including operational and technical requirements for the successful inclusion and implementation of emergency alerting as part of the rollout of ATSC 3.0.

Key manufacturers, such as Monroe—as both a member of the AWARN Alliance and ATSC Implementation Team—have moved forward in implementing and integrating ATSC 3.0 capabilities in their product sets for broadcast television stations. In 2016, Monroe introduced initial support for ATSC 3.0 AEA capabilities, culminating with industry’s first over-the-air ATSC 3.0 transmission with emergency alerting at WRAL-TV.

This next-generation emergency information capability is a voluntary initiative of broadcasters and equipment manufacturers that is separate from (although potentially complementary) to EAS. As complementary functions, we expect that EAS will continue to provide its essential functions for national and local public alert and warning, while ATSC 3.0 next-generation alerting and capabilities will provide a value-added function from television broadcasters. 

Importantly, for the broadcast community, the migration to ATSC 3.0 emergency alerting capabilities can leverage many of the assets that most TV broadcasters already have in place in their facilities. Because this portion of the television broadcast industry already has certain specific EAS equipment in place that can be upgraded for ATSC 3.0 support, the migration path for these stations may become even easier. Monroe Electronics is further integrating support for ATSC 3.0 into EAS equipment and content management solutions, providing the stepping-off point to leverage the enhanced public warning capabilities of next-generation digital television.

Edward Czarnecki, PhD, is senior director for Strategic & Government Affairs for Monroe Electronics, a provider of emergency information solutions for the TV industry. Dr. Czarnecki is active in several standards groups, particularly in the areas emergency alerting and emergency communications. He is a member of the ATSC Technology Group on ATSC 3.0 (TG3), the ATSC AHG on service delivery and synchronization for ATSC 3.0, as well as the AWARN Alliance. Dr. Czarnecki works closely with both broadcasters and government agencies, and is currently a member of several working groups examining next-generation alerting.He can be reached at ed.czarnecki@monroe-electronics.com.

For a comprehensive list of TV Technology’s ATSC 3.0 coverage, see our ATSC3 silo

“The power’s off.” “Is it off everywhere?”

We look over the valley floor. A few houses have generators. Most are dark. The wind is howling. The redwood table is floating in the pool and the roof is trying to lift off. The main road is closed because someone’s roof did lift off and hurtled through a transformer.

“Do you have a transistor radio?”

“I have this weather radio. It probably needs new batteries.”

“I don’t think we need a weather radio. It’s windier than the inside of a turbine. We need to check the local news if we want to see where the flying roof went. I don’t suppose you have a battery-powered TV?”

“Well, as a matter of fact…”

We didn’t need it. The power came back on that night. Some poor souls were out there in bucket trucks handling electrified cables so we could keep our beer cold.

It doesn’t always work out that way, as every cattle rancher in the heartland knows full well. We just lost power for a while. They lost a million acres, thousands of head and several comrades.

I don’t know if AWARN’s advanced alerting technology could have averted those casualties, but it arguably does have the potential to save lives. AWARN aggregates information from across multiple first-responder agencies and delivers it in real time—something first responders themselves did not have on 9/11.

AWARN, for “Advanced Warning and Response Network,” is the emergency alert system overlay of ATSC 3.0, the proposed new transmission methodology for broadcast TV signals. We’ve heard about the platform’s “rich media” capabilities for awhile, but it’s the cross-agency aggregation with live TV coverage that commands attention, plus the ability to target and reach those most affected.

AWARN is able to achieve these things, we’re told.

Even when the power is off.

ARLINGTON, VA.–Marking its one-year anniversary, the AWARN Alliance provided a preview of advanced emergency alerting capabilities via Next Gen TV that will be demonstrated at the 2017 NAB Show.

(L to R): John Lawson, executive director, AWARN Alliance, Fiona James, AWARN Alliance deputy director, and Sam Matheny, NAB CTO
The demonstration of the Advanced Warning and Response Network—held at Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA-TV—was designed to show how the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, which will be approved within the next several months, will allow broadcasters to dramatically upgrade the content, pervasiveness, and reliability of disaster warning and recovery information to TVs and mobile devices, according to AWARN Alliance Executive Director John Lawson.

AWARN will leverage other powerful features of Next-Gen TV, including the ability to “wake up” devices, robust indoor and mobile reception, personalization, and integration with hybrid networks. AWARN alerts can also be delivered to mobile devices even if the cellular network is overloaded or the electric grid is down.

“Geo-targeted, rich media AWARN alerts will give people a whole new level of life-saving information, literally at their fingertips,” Lawson said. “AWARN has the ability to deliver not only text, but photos, surveillance video, storm tracks, plume models, evacuation routes, shelter-in-place instructions, hospital wait times, power outages, and many other forms of vital content.”

These capabilities will far exceed emergency systems available to the American public today, primarily the Emergency Alert System (EAS), rooted in the Cold War, with its familiar tones and bars for radio and television, and Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) text messages, currently limited to 90 characters, distributed by wireless carriers. “Because of the flexibility of ATSC 3.0, AWARN can easily transmit multilingual and accessible media as well,” Lawson said. The WEA, which was initiated after 9/11, will be expanded to provide over 300 characters in the future.

Lawson noted that AWARN can be used in conjunction with WEA when cellular networks can become overwhelmed. “I think [broadcasters] and wireless and going to be able to work together on this,” he said, adding that the advantages of broadcasting’s one-to-many transmission approach, coupled with ATSC 3.0’s hybrid IP/broadcast technology, will provide a more comprehensive emergency alert network. He used the Integrated Public Alert Warning System (iPAWS), which was created in 2006 to illustrate this cooperation.

“[The concept of] iPAWS is an excellent one in that alerting should be a ‘network of networks’ and wherever one network touches another in a mesh, then that alert should be relayed across the new network,” Lawson said. “So eventually we think the Wireless Emergency Alert and what we’re doing can work together. But because we’re using the television airwaves to send the alert directly to the device, whether it’s in your living room or in your hand, we don’t need the cellular network. But if the cellular network is available, we can embed urls, or we can embed the right hashtag, for example.”

NAB SHOW DEMOS
A key goal of the Alliance is to develop models that can be adopted seamlessly as ATSC 3.0 is launched by early adopter stations in 2018. Lawson said the Alliance is making steady progress toward that goal, including the following demonstrations at the NAB Show:

• AMBER: With the support of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, WJLA in Arlington, Va., and LG Electronics and its Zenith affiliate, the Alliance has produced an advanced AMBER alert demo.

• Tornado: With ABC 33/40 in Birmingham, Ala. and LG/Zenith, the Alliance has produced a tornado warning based on the real events of April 27, 2011, a “super outbreak” that claimed more than 250 lives in the Birmingham-Tuscaloosa area of Alabama.

• Chemical spill: And with WJLA, LG/Zenith, and Digital Alert Systems, the Alliance has produced a “HazMat” chemical spill alert, loosely based on the May 2016 CSX train derailment in Northeast Washington, DC.

Triveni Digital also supported production of each demo. Currently WRAL in Raleigh, N.C., with the support of UNC-TV in Chapel Hill, is producing an active shooter alert that includes encrypted content for first responders.

The three prototypes encoded by LG for ATSC 3.0 can be viewed at the Next-Gen TV Hub, booth L11, in the Grand Lobby of Central Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

AWARN will include several demos of its alert system at the Next-Gen TV Hub, booth L11, in the Grand Lobby of Central Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center during the NAB Show.
To test and demonstrate broadcasters’ flexibility in implementing advanced alerting, NAB PILOT has re-encoded two of the alerts as HTML5 apps that can be broadcast through the ATSC 3.0 signal and received on tablets via a home gateway device. Those demos can be viewed at Futures Park in NAB PILOT booth N1838FP in North Hall.

The Alliance will host an executive breakfast on Wednesday, April 26 from 8-9 a.m. in Westgate Conference Rooms 1-2 that will focus on synergies between AWARN alerts and Next Gen TV business models. Contact AWARN Alliance Deputy Director Fiona James to register.

AWARN ALLIANCE EXPANDS
Lawson also used the anniversary to announced the expansion of membership into the AWARN Allliance, which is a coalition of commercial and public broadcasters, consumer electronics and broadcast technology companies, national trade groups, and service providers who have come together to develop and deploy AWARN. Membership in the Alliance has more than doubled since its founding just one year ago, adding public broadcasters, national groups, tech companies, and law firms.

The Alliance, along with the Consumer Technology Association, the National Association of Broadcasters, and America’s Public Televisions Stations, is a signatory to the April 2016 “joint petition” to the Federal Communications Commission requesting rules to allow broadcasters to begin transmitting in the ATSC 3.0 standard on a voluntary basis. The FCC approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for that purpose in February.

WASHINGTON—Broadcasters got a taste of what to expect with mobile alerts with ATSC 3.0 when the New York and New Jersey bombing suspect was apprehended, thanks in part to 90-character Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA).

The next-gen transmission standard is supposed to help Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) the ability to provide text, photos, videos, maps and links in its alerts. The alerts will be able to be received by smart TVs, tablets, and smartphones. “AWARN will also deliver multilingual and accessible alerts, plus active links to social media and reporting to authorities,” said John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance.

However, AWARN needs the FCC to approve ATSC 3.0 to fully utilize this technology. The AWARN Alliance recently joined a petition that calls for the FCC to approve the voluntary use of ATSC 3.0 by local TV stations.

For more information on the petition, click here.

For more on ATSC 3.0, see our coverage silo.

LAS VEGAS—LG Electronics and Sinclair Broadcast Group conducted their first over-the-air broadcast of advanced emergency alerting using the emerging ATSC 3.0 standard.

Sinclair and LG are demonstrating how “AWARN” technology would enhance communications with the public and first-responders during emergencies. AWARN—the Advanced Warning and Response Network—is the first implementation of advanced emergency alerting for ATSC 3.0.

Developed by various Advanced Television Systems Committee members in parallel with the ATSC standardization process, AWARN leverages ATSC 3.0’s higher data throughout, more robust transmission and improved indoor reception. Using a standard alerting protocol, AWARN alerting can wake-up a device and includes rich-media features such as video, evacuation routes and HTML pages.

In this week’s AWARN broadcast (a “first,” according to Sinclair and LG) rich-media emergency alerts, including video and public safety information related to a severe weather emergency, are being transmitted by Sinclair from Las Vegas’ Black Mountain on Channel 45, under an experimental FCC license obtained by ONE Media, Sinclair’s joint venture. ATSC 3.0 broadcast equipment was provided by GatesAir and Triveni Digital.

The ATSC 3.0 signal carrying AWARN data is being received with a simple antenna at the Las Vegas Convention Center and the new ATSC 3.0 chip tuner/demodulator from LG Electronics. In addition to embedded ATSC 3.0 upper-layer ROUTE and DASH firmware, the LG Ultra HD TV features an intuitive user interface that enables simple navigation between rich-media elements. Simulated emergency program information is provided by Capitol Broadcasting’s WRAL-TV.

LG and Sinclair, along with ONE Media and LG’s U.S. R&D subsidiary Zenith Electronics, are key contributors, both to the ATSC 3.0 standard and to AWARN. ONE Media technology is in the newly standardized bootstrap signaling system, while LG/Zenith technology is included the ATSC 3.0 physical layer transmission system Candidate Standard, which is moving toward final standard status in the coming weeks.

These companies, together with Pearl TV and Pilot (formerly NAB Labs), are joining other broadcasters and technology companies in the AWARN Alliance, a new technology and public policy group, whose primary mission is to accelerate deployment of ATSC 3.0 emergency alerting.

“Combining robust transmission, single-frequency networks and rich media alerts will mean reaching millions of Americans simultaneously during emergencies, regardless of device,” said Mark Aitken, Sinclair’s vice president for Advanced Technology.

Dr. Jong Kim, LG senior vice president president of LG’s Zenith R&D Lab said, “After years of development, ATSC 3.0 and AWARN are ready for prime time, as demonstrated by the successful test ATSC 3.0 broadcast in Las Vegas. Advanced emergency alerting represents a core benefit of Next Generation TV for broadcasters and viewers alike.”

The AWARN broadcast demonstration can be seen at the NAB Show in “ATSC Consumer Experience” exhibit, LVCC South Hall, upper level.

WASHINGTON– Pearl TV, Pilot and Sinclair have joined other broadcast groups to support the rapid deployment of the Advanced Warning and Response Network, or “AWARN.” Together, they are forming the AWARN Alliance, whose primary mission is to implement the advanced alerting capabilities of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard being developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

AWARN leverages ATSC 3.0 technology to deliver rich media, multilingual, and geo-targeted content–including video, storm tracks, evacuation routes, flood maps, and earthquake early warnings–to millions of consumer devices simultaneously. Delivered over broadcast spectrum from TV stations equipped with back-up generators, AWARN will function even when cellular networks overload or the electric grid goes down.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is currently testing initial AWARN-related technologies at the FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Lab in Indian Head, Md.

The AWARN Alliance will be launching officially next week at the 2016 National Association of Broadcasters convention. In addition to Pearl, Sinclair and Pilot (formerly NAB Labs), members include Capitol Broadcasting Co., Digital Alert Systems/Monroe Electronics, Gates Air, LG Electronics/Zenith and Triveni Digital. Each has been instrumental in the development of AWARN and its predecessor technologies through their investment in research and development. Another Alliance member, the Public Broadcasting Service, also has provided technical support during AWARN’s entire development cycle.

PBS serves 350 member stations. Pearl TV members own and operate more than 200 network-affiliated TV stations. Pearl member companies are Cox Media Group, the E.W. Scripps Company, Graham Media Group, Hearst Television Inc., Media General Inc., Meredith Local Media Group, Raycom Media, and TEGNA, Inc. Sinclair Broadcast Group owns or operates 171 TV stations and, through its affiliate, ONE Media, also has been a major contributor to the development of ATSC 3.0.

Together, Pearl TV, Sinclair, and Capitol Broadcasting reach over 80 percent of U.S. television households.

The Alliance’s executive director is one of the chief architects of AWARN, John Lawson, long-time broadcasting executive and principal at Convergence Services, Inc.

WASHINGTON —The federal agency in charge of managing national emergencies will conduct tests on the advanced alerting capabilities of ATSC 3.0, the new broadcast transmission standard now under development.

The Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency National Continuity Programs’ Integrated Public Alert and Warning System—IPAWS—Division said it has “begun to assess the feasibility of a public alert and warning capability that is being developed in the private sector.”

This technology, the Advanced Warning and Response Network, or AWARN, works by using advanced capabilities in ATSC 3.0, which provides for the transmission of large media-rich, data messages over-the-air to mobile, portable, and fixed TV devices without interrupting the programming.

The new technology could deliver detailed emergency information to the public with pictures and videos of evacuation routes, storm tracks, and shelter information – increasing community preparedness before, during, and after a disaster. The media alerts will be able to include multilingual and multi-format information to warn non-English speaking populations and people with access and functional needs.

AWARN capitalizes on existing emergency alerting standards and builds upon the Mobile Emergency Alert System, or M-EAS, developed during a pilot project and standardized by the Advanced Television Systems Committee.

FEMA’s testing, in the IPAWS Lab located at the Joint Interoperability Test Command in Indian Head, Md., will demonstrate the feasibility and operational deployment of AWARN within the IPAWS suite of technologies and allow public safety officials to gain confidence using IPAWS in a secure environment, according to FEMA.

“FEMA is committed to working with the private sector to examine and improve future alerts and warnings,” said Roger Stone, acting assistant administrator for National Continuity Programs. “New systems could someday include pictures and video as part of the advanced alert and warning information provided to the general public.”

FEMA’s IPAWS is a national system for local alerting. IPAWS enables authorities at all levels of government to alert and warn people in areas endangered by disasters. IPAWS is used by federal, state, and local authorities to send emergency alerts to cellular phones as Wireless Emergency Alerts, to radio and television as Emergency Alert System broadcasts, to NOAA Weather Radios, and to an All-Hazards Alert and Information Feed for Internet applications, services, and Websites.

For more information on IPAWS, visit www.fema.gov/ipaws.