The announcement was made by Wayne Pecena, president of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

To give you an idea of how deep Imlay’s roots are with the SBE: His first case was to try to appeal the FCC decision to eliminate the First Class Radiotelephone License. He said his SBE role has “allowed me to do what I do best: defending spectrum allocations of clients and participating in technical regulatory proceedings.”

[Read Chris Imlay’s Contributions to Radio World]

“Chris has worked with the SBE since 1980, and has been the SBE’s general counsel since 1991,” the society stated. Pecena called him “a valuable resource for and asset to the SBE over the past 41 years. He has also been a staunch advocate for the SBE’s goals and objectives. He is a tough act to follow.”

The society said it will split Imlay’s duties; it plans a process to find a replacement communications counsel, and also will hire an attorney for business matters based near its headquarters in Indianapolis.

Meanwhile Imlay will continue to work part-time for other long-term clients.

In the announcement, he was quoted describing himself as “a down-in-the-trenches communications lawyer” who loved working with broadcast engineers. And for 37 years until 2018, Imlay also was general counsel for ARRL, the national association for amateur radio; he is former president of the Foundation for Amateur Radio and recently was inducted into the CQ magazine Hall of Fame.

Several commentaries by Chris Imlay have appeared in Radio World in recent years, on topics such as engineer ethics and the idea of broadcasters as “first responders.” Read those here.

SBE said Imlay has worked for 22 SBE presidents and was elected a Fellow of the SBE in 1997.

According to SBE’s summary of his career, Imlay began working in law in 1975 and in communications in 1979 when he joined Booth and Freret.

When SBE sought to administratively appeal the decision to eliminate the First Phone, SBE President Bob Jones retained Bob Booth for the work, and Booth assigned the task to Imlay. The society regained him as communications counsel in 1984 and named him general counsel in 1991.

He was a partner with Booth, Freret and Imlay from 1981 to 1995; president of Booth, Freret, Imlay & Tepper, P.C., from 1995 to 2014; and managing member, Booth, Freret & Imlay, LLC, 2014 to present.

Other clients in federal communications law have included big names like JVCKenwood USA, the National Football League, NASCAR and Goodyear, as well as many TV and radio stations, common carrier and private wireless licensees, as well as video production companies, auto racing sponsors and speedways; and equipment manufacturers.

The author of this commentary is general counsel of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

I am moved to write about a matter now before the Media Bureau at the FCC. The subject is the ethical obligations of broadcast engineers.

Having served as SBE general counsel for 40 years now, I can count on one hand the number of times that the SBE board of directors has found it necessary to revoke an engineer’s SBE membership, and still have some fingers left over.

This, I think, speaks highly of the overall integrity and dedication to ethical principles of the SBE’s membership, and of broadcast engineers overall.

In that same amount of time, I can honestly say that I have never had occasion to question the ethical integrity of any of the engineers that work at the commission.

Sure, we have disagreed, often actively, on policy matters, but on technical matters, I can always count on the accuracy and truth of technical findings by FCC staff. This speaks very well of the high level of integrity of the commission’s engineers.

The only times during my tenure that an SBE member has had that membership revoked were those few cases when an engineer was found as a matter of fact to have violated the SBE Canons of Ethics.

The SBE puts a lot of stock in the Canons of Ethics, and rightly so. The SBE’s Bylaws, at Section 3(a), say that “(a)ny Member may be suspended for a period or expelled for cause, such as violation of any of the By-Laws or Canons of Ethics of the Society or for conduct prejudicial to the best interests of the Society.”

The Canons of Ethics have not been revised or amended in a very long time, largely because they don’t need to be; they state principles of conduct for engineers that simply don’t change.

The preamble to the SBE Canons of Ethics reads as follows: “Honesty, justice and courtesy form a moral philosophy when associated with mutual interest between human beings. This constitutes the foundation of ethics. Broadcast engineers should recognize such a standard of behavior not in passive observance, but as dynamic principles guiding their conduct and way of life. It is the duty of all broadcast engineers to practice their profession according to this Canon of Ethics.

“The keystone of professional conduct is integrity. Broadcast engineers will discharge their duties with fidelity to the public and to their employers, and with impartiality to all. Broadcast engineers must uphold the dignity of their profession and avoid association with any enterprise of questionable character. Broadcast engineers will strive to be fair, tolerant, and open minded.”

To me, the key element of this is the obligation of impartiality. It is what gives broadcast engineers the reputation for the highest levels of integrity.

Indeed, Section 5 of the SBE Canons of Ethics states: “The Broadcast Engineer will express an opinion when it is founded on adequate knowledge and honest conviction while he or she is serving as a witness before a court, commission or other tribunal.”

ETHICAL COMPANY

The SBE is not alone in its strong dedication to the highest level of integrity of its engineer members.

Article V, Section 3 of the Bylaws of the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers (AFCCE) establishes as a standing committee the “Professional Ethics and Grievances Committee” whose job it is to “consider and report on all efforts to improve the professional conduct and ethics of engineering practitioners in the communication field, make such investigations of professional conduct and of abuses in connection with engineering practice by members and furnish information and make recommendations on the foregoing subjects to the Board of Directors and the Association.”

Ethics is obviously a principal focus of AFCCE, which is laudable.

So when the integrity and impartiality of a consulting engineer is drawn into question by the FCC, we tend to sit up and take notice.

In a proceeding now ongoing in the Media Bureau, a low-power FM station has been accused by a second adjacent full-power FM station of causing interference to listeners of the full-power FM at various points near the transmitter site of the LPFM. In such cases, the accused LPFM is entitled to show that the alleged interference either does not exist or that the LPFM station is not the cause of the interference.

The licensee of the LPFM therefore retained a well-respected consulting engineer (and SBE-certified CPBE) who is located in a different state from the LPFM, to investigate the interference. The engineer did so using accepted methodologies, at all sites where the interference was claimed to have been experienced, and the engineer submitted a written report to the Audio Division, Media Bureau, concluding that no interference was found at the locations where the listeners of the full power FM station reported interference, or even at the transmitter site of the LPFM, where second-adjacent interference potential would be the worst. There was no rebuttal of the engineer’s showing by the full-power FM station.

There are a lot of other facts involved in the case, but the Audio Division’s response to the interference study submitted by the LPFM as a part of its response was this: “We also decline to consider [the consulting engineer’s] interference test results because [the consulting engineer] was retained by [the LPFM] and thus is not an independent party.”

It is difficult to understand why the Audio Division concluded, as it did, that all consulting engineers are biased in favor of their client to the point that their work is summarily deemed unreliable.

If a licensee is precluded from engaging an independent consulting engineer to conduct a technical analysis and to fairly present the engineer’s technical conclusions, simply because the licensee is paying for the engineering work, how, precisely, is the licensee supposed to address the technical issue presented?

This case is now on administrative appeal. It is hoped that the commission doesn’t really have this low an impression of the ethics, impartiality and integrity of broadcast engineers.

This article originally appeared in SBE’s newsletter “The Signal.” Learn about SBE membership at sbe.org.

The author is general counsel of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. This commentary was published in the March 2018 edition of The Signal. © SBE

I attended a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee recently, at which both ARRL and NAB had witnesses testify on the respective importance of amateur radio and broadcasting in emergency alerting and disaster response. FCC had a very compelling witness also: Ms. Lisa Fowlkes, the chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, testified on the FCC’s investigation of erroneous emergency alerts.

It was really riveting testimony from all witnesses, and the hearing was fascinating. It dealt specifically with the “false alarm” of an imminent missile attack in Hawaii recently; how such a thing could happen; why it took more than half an hour to rescind the alert and calm the panic in Hawaii; and how to make sure such a nightmare never happens again.

On a broader basis, the hearing testimony provided insight into the function of broadcasters, mobile wireless service providers and amateur radio operators in emergency alerting.

RESPOND VS. INFORM

The testimony of NAB was, I thought, simply excellent. It stressed the important role of broadcasters in front-line emergency alerting, and the reliance of the general public on broadcasters to disseminate emergency information in real time. NAB has asserted that in a disaster situation, 57 percent of the public turns to radio and television broadcast stations for updates and information in emergencies. This is an impressive number in a time of ubiquitous text messaging and other alerting platforms.

[Read: Broadcasters Now Guaranteed Access To Disaster Areas]

So broadcasters are indisputably “kings of the hill” in emergency alerting. But is it fair to call them “first responders”?

One might question that label, inasmuch as it is traditionally associated with, and limited to, police, fire and rescue and EMS personnel. Years ago, I prepared some testimony for an ARRL witness at a congressional hearing about federal support for first responders in spectrum allocations. I likened amateur radio ARES and RACES participants to first responders.  

For that, I had my head handed to me by the then-CEO at ARRL. He told me in no uncertain terms that this would not sit well with first responders, who were the principal served agencies of ARES and RACES. I never drew the analogy again.

Last September, the Senate passed S. 102, the Securing Access to Networks in Disaster Act (SANDy as it came to be known; referencing the 2012 superstorm that ravaged the East Coast). S. 102 was a slightly different bill than H.R. 588, passed in January of 2017 by the House; but they have the same basic intent.

Since the House and Senate Bills are different, the differences had to be resolved by Congress before being sent to the president for signature. Both bills have the same effect with respect to the role of broadcasters in emergencies. They provide for access by “essential service providers” to emergency locations and disaster sites “necessary for establishing temporary or restoring wireline or mobile telephone service, Internet access service, radio or television broadcasting, cable service, or direct broadcast satellite service.”

Both bills specify that the term “essential communications services’’ means “wireline and mobile telephone service, Internet access service, radio and television broadcasting, cable service, and direct broadcast satellite service.” This is a great thing. It allows broadcast engineers to access disaster locations to restore broadcast service during or following a major disaster, and it acknowledges the important role of broadcasters in emergency alerting.

Some states have adopted “first informer” state statutes that have the same effect. But access by broadcasters in this context must be uniform throughout the 50 states and territories in order to solve the problem of access to disaster areas for re-institution of broadcast service.

Inside Radio last September reported the passage of the SANDy Act by the Senate and claimed that the bill “designat(ed) radio and TV as ‘first responders’ during natural disasters.” Actually, the legislation doesn’t do that exactly. “Essential service providers” and “first responders” are not at all synonymous, and the latter term is not found anywhere in either bill.

NAB has carefully avoided misuse of the term “first responders” as well, and good for them for doing so.

NAB was quoted as saying that when hurricanes hit, as they did last fall, “hometown radio and TV stations play a lifesaving role as ‘first informers’ during times of emergencies, and this legislation will provide local broadcasters with access to vital resources to stay on the air when disaster strikes.”

First informers: absolutely. Access to disaster sites to restore broadcast facilities by broadcast engineers: critical. “Essential Service Providers”: absolutely valid description of broadcasters and broadcast engineers. Congress needs to get this legislation to the president pronto, and he needs to sign it without any further delay.

But let’s not confuse roles here.

“First responder” is a term that should be limited to those who really fit the classic description. The term is defined in U.S. Homeland Security Presidential Directive, HSPD-8 which provides the following definition: “those individuals who in the early stages of an incident are responsible for the protection and preservation of life, property, evidence, and the environment, including emergency response providers as defined in section 2 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (6 U.S.C. § 101), as well as emergency management, public health, clinical care, public works, and other skilled support personnel (such as equipment operators) that provide immediate support services during prevention, response and recovery operations.”

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