Charter Communications has agreed to pay a $1.1 million fine to the Federal Communications Commission for violations of emergency alert regulations and has entered into a consent decree with the agency to avoid further violations.

The action stems from a September 2022 FCC order adopting new EAS rules. This order required EAS participants to use text and audio from alerts issued in the Internet-based Common Alert Protocol (CAP) format, if it is available from the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, in preference to the EAS protocol version received over the air.

The FCC order said the CAP-formatted alerts produce higher-quality audio messages, improve the availability of multilingual alerts and ensure that more of the alerts displayed on television screens contain all of the information provided. The changes also replaced the technical jargon that accompanied certain alerts, including test messages, with plain-language terms so the visual and audio messages are clearer to the public.

These rule changes required EAS participants to update their EAS equipment to comply with the rule changes by Dec. 12, 2023.

The FCC said that on Oct. 3, 2023, Charter notified the Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) that Charter’s EAS devices at approximately three dozen cable headends, which provide EAS alerts to more than 1 million Charter customers, would be out of service for the Oct. 4, 2023, nationwide EAS test.

Charter said the EAS devices had been taken out of service as part of its process of upgrading in anticipation of the Dec. 12, 2023 date for compliance with the changes to the EAS rules.

Charter had asserted that because it knew it would meet the December compliance deadline and believed in good faith that it had 60 days under the FCC’s rules to replace its noncompliant equipment, Charter did not respond to PSHSB’s inquiries about the problem. Charter also asserts it was given no reason to believe, after it submitted its notification to PSHSB, that the company was not in compliance with the EAS rules, the FCC reported.

Following an investigation, the FCC concluded that Charter’s EAS Devices were not “defective” under section 11.35(b) during the period Charter took them offline and began negotiating a settlement with Charter.

As part of the settlement, Charter agreed to pay the fine and put measures in place to avoid future problems. That consent decree is available here.

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y.—NVerzion is the latest company to become a Digital Alert Systems (DAS) EAS-NET partner by integrating the DAS EAS-Net communications software with its CloudNine video server platform.

NVerzion joins many other broadcast technology vendors, including Evertz Microsystems, Utah Scientific and Florical, as EAS-Net partners, said Bill Robertson, VP, business development at DAS, Nov. 7 during a telephone interview.

The NVerzion implementation of EAS-Net software gives users of the NVerzion CloudNine video server a direct IP link with the DAS DASDEC emergency messaging platform. No separate audio wiring is necessary, assuring high-quality audio alerting is delivered to the server along with Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) data, he said.

The integration makes it possible for broadcasters and cablecasters using the CloudNine server to meet their mandated EAS/CAP responsibilities from a traditional master control room or other playout environment, the company said.

NVerzion has integrated the DAS EAS/CAP messaging capabilities directly with NVerzion’s graphics overlay and audio playback systems. “It’s not an upstream keyer or a downstream keyer [in the CloudNine server],” said NVerzion President Scott Murphy in a phone interview. “We call it an inter-stream keyer.”

Stations are required to broadcast emergency alerts in text form and as audio, said DAS’s Robertson. “The way NVerzion did it is to provide a background color to represent the severity of the alert.”

NVerzion’s implementation inspects the essence of an incoming alert message and without creating a delay triggers a background color that’s appropriate to the emergency warning to be broadcast—for instance, green for a test, yellow for a watch and red for a warning, said Robertson.

“They [NVerzion] have gone beyond the basic ‘throw a crawl up there’ by understanding the essence of the alert and representing it on screen for viewers in a colorful way,” he added.

The CloudNine server with the EAS/CAP messaging integration is especially well-suited for broadcast operations on tight budgets, such as digital subchannels, Murphy added.

More information is available on the NVerzion website and the DAS website.