WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau has issued a Memorandum and Order once again delaying the implementation of the so-called “Audible Crawl Rule.” Implementation of the rule has been delayed six times in the past.

The rule applies to “video programming distributors and video programming providers,” including TV stations, who must “provide an aural representation of visual, non-textual emergency information that is displayed during non-newscast programming, such as radar maps or other graphics, on a secondary audio stream” for persons who are blind or visually impaired.

The rule was adopted on April 8, 2013, with an original effective date of May 26, 2015, but has been waived and delayed “to the present day because a technical solution for automated descriptions of the information in such graphics does not exist,” the NAB said in a Nov. 15 2024 filing.

As it subsequently examined the issue, the Media Bureau granted two temporary six-month extensions until May of 2026.

In granting a waver until November of 2027, the Bureau ruled that “the record shows `special circumstances’ warrant a waiver. The Bureau continues to recognize the critical importance of making emergency information accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. We find that the best way to ensure the continued availability of emergency information is to extend the waiver that has been in place since 2015. Compliance with the Audible Crawl Rule as it is currently written cannot be implemented through technical means with regard to visual but non-textual emergency information, and there is no indication that any such technical means will be available soon.”

“We grant the waiver for a 18-month period (through November 29, 2027) or until there is a ruling on the underlying Petition, whichever is sooner,” the Bureau added. “During the more than ten years that the successive waivers have been in place, the record indicates that there has been little progress in developing a workable technical compliance solution, and there is no indication of imminent progress. A 18-month waiver will allow the Commission to consider the pending Petition, and it will allow the industry to consider compliance solutions.”

The full Memorandum and Order is available here.

The Consumer Technology Association told the Federal Communications Commission last week that it believes the current Emergency Alert System is highly effective and, if expanded, could create more problems than it solves.

The association’s comments were in response to an NPRM issued by the commission last month in which it said it would explore whether fundamental changes to the Emergency Alert System—which provides emergency alerts to the public via radio, television, satellite and cable systems, and Wireless Emergency Alerts—which provide emergency alerts to supported mobile devices—would make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs

The CTA told the commission that while it appreciated its efforts towards reassessing the state of emergency alerting in the U.S., adding more regulations to current rules would be expensive and time-consuming.

“Expanding EAS and WEA beyond the media and devices they reach now would require overcoming resource-intensive and complicated technical hurdles, while duplicating the alerting that the public already receives,” the CTA said in its filing. “Because the public safety community has expressed concern with alert fatigue, avoiding unintended consequences also requires the careful evaluation of any new requirements and guidelines.”

With nearly all Americans (98% as of 2024) owning a cellphone, CTA said the current system works well.

“The integration of wireless phones into consumers’ lives means that the shift in behavior from traditional television and radio to online media and connected devices does not frustrate the alerting ‘systems’ objectives of widespread public notification about emergencies,” the association told the FCC.

The CTA added that “most Americans receive emergency and public safety information through WEA to mobile devices, not terrestrial radio or broadcast television.”

When a combined WEA-EAS test was conducted in October 2023, the association conducted a survey to determine how Americans received the emergency alerts, and found that approximately 245 million U.S. adults (95%) received or heard the emergency alert via their phone. Specifically, 92% of U.S. adults (approximately 237 million) indicated they received the alert through their smartphone.

“The results of this survey illustrate the ubiquity of cellphones and smartphones and the effectiveness of the WEA system in reaching device users,” the CTA said.

Even when watching TV or listening to the radio, consumers usually have their mobile devices close by, CTA added.

“Consistent with CTA’s 2023 nationwide test survey findings, other data also indicate that most people watch television while engaging with a second screen such as a phone or tablet,” CTA said. “Thus, even if a person streams television content or other forms of entertainment not capable of receiving EAS, WEA could still successfully notify the individual of an emergency using a nearby cellphone or cellular-connected/paired wearable.”

Although the CTA all but dismissed broadcast alerts as obsolete, it did admit that because the current EAS model is built on broadcast-based architecture, adding new rules would cause technical barriers because most OTT services stream content on-demand and not live.

“Over-the-top (OTT) streaming and other internet services are different in fundamental ways from broadcast technologies, creating challenges to the technical feasibility of using such services to transmit EAS alerts," CTA said. "Many OTT services cannot broadcast real-time content, limiting their ability to transmit real-time alerts, or only allowing them to do so on a limited basis.

“These OTT services are more accurately described as on-demand file services with content on the edge of networks or in content delivery networks,” the CTA added. “Such services are not designed to broadcast real-time or near-real-time content like EAS alerts,“ the consumer electronics trade group continued. “Effectively transmitting internet alerts would also require gathering, analyzing, targeting and parsing location information beyond the current EAS capabilities. Many streaming services and internet-connected devices do not have or are not designed to transmit content based on location in the way that EAS alerts require. EAS participants and relay stations directly transmit to a specific geographic area based on the location of the participants and relevant stations, such as the relevant state or locality. Many internet-connected devices, in contrast, do not readily identify their location beyond country or world region.”

The fragmented nature of viewing SVOD services on multiple devices is another technical hurdle, CTA said.

“Multiple users on the same account in more than one location can often use a streaming service simultaneously, complicating the targeting of local and state alerts,” the association said. “Using a service in multiple, disparate locations presents a challenge to the precise location targeting of the vast majority of alerts, such as during hurricanes and other weather events.”

Unlike broadcast, which uses standards such as ATSC 1.0 or 3.0 that ensure compatibility, streaming devices do not, CTA said, adding another technical burden.

“Ensuring interoperability among the different streaming technologies and EAS is another obstacle to technical feasibility,” CTA said. “Streaming companies do not have a 'core technology' to use to transmit EAS alerts, unlike traditional ATSC 1.0 broadcasting or the Advanced Emergency Alert in ATSC 3.0. The large variety of internet-capable end-user devices provides an additional challenge for ensuring compatibility with a uniform format for EAS transmissions.”

The association suggested that the FCC may have bitten off more than it could chew in the current notice of proposed rulemaking.

“Given the high-level nature of the inquiries in the NPRM, CTA anticipates that a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would be appropriate to allow industry and other stakeholders to evaluate and comment on any specific new requirements and identify implementation challenges,” the association said. “If the Commission develops new proposals, CTA urges the Commission to refrain from proposing any user interface or equipment mandates, which risk both exceeding the FCC’s legal authority and stifling innovation by locking in regulator-dictated design choices. In addition, any new rules should provide a sufficient implementation period, as well as provide for waivers, including class waivers, where appropriate.”

WASHINGTON—In the run-up to its August open meeting, the Federal Communications Commission has released details of its previously announced plans to embark on an effort to “re-examine…national alert and warning systems from the ground up and explore whether fundamental changes to these systems could make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs.”

At the August meeting, the FCC will vote on whether to proceed with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will begin the effort by seeking public comment on wide variety of topics that could ultimately produce fundamental changes in the workings of current alerting systems.

Notably the proposed NPRM does not mention the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the Trump administration is trying to defund. In the past the CPB has played a major role in channeling funding to public stations to implement and upgrade their alerting systems.

The proposed NPRM also makes no mention of ATSC 3.0 or the transition to NextGenTV/ATSC 3.0. Proponents of 3.0 broadcasts have repeatedly touted its capabilities for delivering much more robust and informative alerts.

The FCC reports that the NPRM, which has been released to the public but won't take effect until it is has been voted on, will consider these main issues:

• "Seeks comment on the objectives that effective alert and warning systems should serve.
• “Explores which entities need to be able to send alerts to fully accomplish these objectives and how these needs should be addressed in the design of alerting systems.
• “Considers the alert transmission capabilities that a national public alert and warning system must have to achieve its objectives, including the need for resilience, geographic targeting and security.
• “Examines both the kinds of information that needs to be conveyed to the public and how that information needs to be conveyed for the nation's alert and warning systems to be effective.
• “Asks whether EAS and WEA are meeting the needs and expectations of both the public and alerting authorities, and if not, whether EAS and WEA need to be redesigned to fully reach their potential for achieving the nation's alerting objectives."

The proposed NPRM notes, “Congress established the Commission for the purposes of, among other things, the national defense and “promoting safety of life and property through the regulation of wire and radio communications networks.

“For nearly 75 years, the Commission has implemented this mandate by adopting rules that set technical and other requirements to provide the public with an effective national public alert and warning system,” the proposed NPRM explained. “The Commission’s approach to emergency alerting has been to implement regulations intended to leverage existing commercial communications infrastructure for public safety purposes and to update that existing capability over time to reflect advances in technology and evolving consumer expectations. While this approach has gradually improved the nation’s alerting capabilities, it may also have restricted innovation by preserving alerting frameworks that are decades old without examining whether more fundamental structural changes are warranted.”

To overcome that issue the proposed NPRM said: “In this Notice, we take a novel approach by seeking first to identify what goals the nation’s alert and warning systems should be designed to serve. Proceeding from these first principles will enable the Commission to explore alternatives to our historical regulatory approach and consider how to maximize the usefulness, effectiveness, and resiliency of EAS and WEA consistent with our legal authority. As part of this examination, we seek to identify the objectives that an effective national alerting system should advance, how alerting systems should be designed to ensure that they serve the needs of alerting authorities, what kinds of information alerting systems should deliver, how that information can be most effectively conveyed to the public, public expectations when receiving that information, and other important considerations necessary for modernizing the nation’s public alert and warning capabilities.”

The proposed NPRM extensively covers questions and issues regarding how alerts are currently delivered, with an eye towards changing that infrastructure to reflect how people use devices and consume media.

As part of that effort, it also raises questions about whether the current system of relying on radio and TV broadcasts and cable systems may be outmoded.

“Today, the public can receive emergency alerts from various sources like mobile devices, radio and television broadcasts, cable services, wireline video services, and road signs,” the proposed NPRM explained. “The public, however, increasingly engages with content through other media and platforms that are not equipped to interrupt content to provide emergency messages, such as personal computers, tablets without commercial mobile service, wearable technology, gaming consoles, smart speakers, streaming services, and social media. This shift in consumer behavior indicates that fewer people may be using the platforms through which emergency messages have been traditionally issued, which may frustrate the EAS and WEA systems’ objectives of widespread public notification about emergencies.

“Are the services that transmit EAS alerts—radio and television broadcast, cable service, wireline video services, and certain satellite services—representative of how people consume video and audio services today?” the proposed NPRM asks. “Does EAS remain an effective tool for alert originators if it only makes alerts available over those services?If the public’s media habits are changing, what changes can the Commission implement to make sure that EAS and WEA continue to follow the public’s eyes and ears…Alternatively, is a new alerting system needed to reach the public on these other media and platforms?”

The full proposed NPRM can be found here.

If the FCC is going to allow radio broadcasters to adopt software-based EAS infrastructure, it should weigh the challenges of virtualization and consider how potential solutions might work together to meet them within the current regulatory framework.

That was the message from representatives of Digital Alert Systems, Telos Alliance and Nautel, who met in a video conference in October with nine staff members of the commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.

What follows is a summary of the presentation, submitted to the FCC as an ex parte filing. It was written by Edward Czarnecki, vice president, global and government affairs for Digital Alert Systems and has been edited for space.

You can view slides that accompanied this presentation here.

The purpose of the meeting was to provide the FCC with a full understanding of a solution supporting EAS in audio-over-IP (AoIP) and virtualized environments currently deployed at several broadcast radio stations. …

The meeting began with an overview of issues faced by various radio stations adopting audio-over-IP and virtual architectures that do not readily integrate with certain legacy approaches.

The three companies meeting with the FCC combined their resources to craft an approach to address the AoIP and virtualization challenge for EAS. We also noted that many radio participants may not be aware of similar integrations already accomplished within the video services sectors — cable, IPTV, and broadcast TV—over the past decade to support EAS in IP and virtual environments.

While noting that virtualization brings new possibilities that might provide cost savings and new types of functionalities, we outlined various limitations of virtualization — as acknowledged by industry experts — that some forms of virtualization can be problematic considering a range of regulatory, policy, security and operational factors.

We explained how some of the broadcast industry’s leading manufacturers have collaborated to develop and field a solution to enable EAS in a virtualized environment. This approach — called “EAS-at-the-Edge” — involves a hybrid combination of the EAS device at the operator site, virtualized systems for radio station operations and virtualized services for system monitoring, management, reporting and software updating.

Conventional EAS processing at a radio station essentially consists of switching baseband audio, which is insufficient for the IP requirements of an AoIP or virtualized system. In the hybrid virtualized EAS-at-the-Edge environment, the DASDEC addresses this obstacle by communicating via IP (AES-67 plus routing/control protocols) to enable EAS insertion into the modern AoIP air chain. Hybrid virtualization combines IP-enabled EAS appliance and software virtualization to simplify EAS from reception to playback.

As discussed during the meeting, this approach yields an elegant architecture by essentially reducing the radio station footprint to two devices. With this currently deployable architecture, our hope is this approach simplifies issues for broadcasters in terms of cost, complexity and FCC compliance.

We illustrated how virtualized radio station solutions already provided by Telos Alliance (the Omnia.9) and Nautel (the GV2) were able to fully interface with the DASDEC EAS system, using a combination of Livewire for AoIP support and EAS-net for additional signaling functions. We showed how, as in the case of Nautel, this combination of resources reduces virtualized broadcast station to an elegant two-unit approach — the DASDEC for comprehensive emergency alert management plus the GV2 to accommodate every function from audio playout, PPM encoding, audio processing, RDS encoding, FM/HD modulation and transmission.

Our joint stance is that the hybrid virtual approach would be secure and afford a greater deal of resilience in the broadcast architecture. In response to questions from the FCC regarding scenarios of internet unavailability and system survivability, we provided detailed responses stressing the flexibility and survivability of this architecture. The example of one client was provided, where they intend to run processing and insertion at the network operations center (NOC) but are also implementing redundancy at the edge (the transmission points) if contact with the NOC was lost.

Simplified station architectures were examined via two leading virtual air chains (the examples of the Telos Omnia.9 and Nautel GV2). One objective of this approach is to provide autonomous continuity of operations at the local station or local transmission site. Regardless of a particular air chain configuration, there would be survivability and ability to inject the EAS message into the transmitter regardless of disruption in other areas of the air chain.

A range of security considerations were discussed, including a broadcast station’s overall security posture and component-level security. We addressed questions from the FCC participants around security at a radio station’s studio and transmitter, and between the studio and the transmitter.

We illustrated how virtualized radio station solutions already provided by Telos Alliance (the Omnia.9) and Nautel (the GV2) were able to fully interface with the DASDEC EAS system, using a combination of Livewire for AoIP support and EAS-net for additional signaling functions. We showed how, as in the case of Nautel, this combination of resources reduces virtualized broadcast station to an elegant two-unit approach—the DASDEC for comprehensive emergency alert management plus the GV2 to accommodate every function from audio playout, PPM encoding, audio processing, RDS encoding, FM/HD modulation and transmission.

Our joint stance is that the hybrid virtual approach would be secure and afford a greater deal of resilience in the broadcast architecture. In response to questions from the FCC regarding scenarios of internet unavailability and system survivability, we provided detailed responses stressing the flexibility and survivability of this architecture. The example of one client was provided, where they intend to run processing and insertion at the network operations center (NOC) but are also implementing redundancy at the edge (the transmission points) if contact with the NOC was lost.

Simplified station architectures were examined via two leading virtual air chains (the examples of the Telos Omnia.9 and Nautel GV2). One objective of this approach is to provide autonomous continuity of operations at the local station or local transmission site. Regardless of a particular air chain configuration, there would be survivability and ability to inject the EAS message into the transmitter regardless of disruption in other areas of the air chain.

A range of security considerations were discussed, including a broadcast station’s overall security posture and component-level security. We addressed questions from the FCC participants around security at a radio station’s studio and transmitter, and between the studio and the transmitter.

The meeting highlighted how this particular approach enables EAS in virtual and AoIP air chains, with full compliance with existing regulatory and operational requirements, including FCC Part 11 and Part 15 rules, government equipment type approval, and FEMA IPAWS conformity testing.

Our strong recommendation was that no solution should be contemplated by an EAS participant or the government without fully meeting those existing interagency requirements.

It was noted that this approach has already received significant industry recognition, including the 2024 Technology Award from the Society of Broadcast Engineers, and a Radio World “Best of Show” Award at the 2024 NAB Show.

We observed that, as published in trade press and stated by FEMA officials, FEMA IPAWS prefers “full compliance with FCC rules” and has stated “IPAWS does not endorse any specific product but enthusiastically welcomes discussion about innovative solutions that can enhance the timely and effective distribution of alerts to the public.”

Virtualized EAS device administration was presented in the form of Digital Alert Systems’ HALO system that monitors and manages all EAS devices in an enterprise environment. With fully virtualized EAS device administration, HALO provides remote enterprise monitoring, health status and configuration management of EAS devices, with provisions for remote delivery of software updates and security patches.

Currently deployed at major broadcast and cable TV operations, HALO can also provide the remote monitoring, management and updating capabilities being sought by the broadcast radio industry. In response to a question from the FCC regarding virtualized EAS software and HALO, we clarified that HALO remote enterprise management applies to EAS in either a physical or virtual (VM) environment.

Regarding accessibility, we detailed information on how we have utilized this EAS-at-the-Edge to successfully broadcast visual alerts in HD Radio, incorporating symbology to visually indicate the presence and type of alerts on enabled radio receivers. We suggested this approach would further the commission’s objectives of making emergency alerts more accessible including to those with limited English proficiency. Responding to FCC questions, we clarified that the symbology was included in the HD Radio data (program art) transmission sent from the station and received on conventional HD Radio receivers.

Whether via symbology in HD Radio, or RDS, our approach can enable persistence in the display of alerts during the active time of an emergency event, even after the EAS message itself has been played. This approach is compatible with millions of HD Radios currently used in the U.S. today, without any change required by the consumer or HD Radio manufacturer.

Concluding the meeting, we recapped how this industry-proven approach yields reduced security and operational risks while maintaining regulatory and operational compliance. This standards-based approach combines simplicity, reliability and high availability in an architecture that is being deployed today.

We also noted our hope for continued discussion between industry participants, hopefully leading to a consensus on optimal paths forward given operational, regulatory, and technical realities. …

Digital Alert Systems, Nautel and Telos Alliance thank the commission for its efforts to maintain a resilient and secure national Emergency Alert System. Our companies are mutually committed to the development and deployment of broadcast systems that will achieve the objectives of a secure, reliable and robust public warning architecture in ways that will be compliant with government requirements.

[Related: “NAB Differs With EAS at the Edge in Important Respects” ]

This article initially appeared in TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau said Paramount Global is being fined $244,952 for violations of emergency alerting rules and the company has entered into a consent degree detailing how it will work to avoid future violations.

The fine and decree follow an FCC investigation into allegations that various operations owned by Paramount improperly transmitted Emergency Alert System (EAS) codes, the EAS attention signal or recordings or simulations during two TV programs and one radio program.

In the consent decree, Paramount admitted violations involving the syndicated “Entertainment Tonight” broadcast on Oct. 25, 2023 and the CBS News Radio “On the Hour” newscast on June 6, 2024. It also admitted certain facts regarding an episode of “Young Sheldon” broadcast by the CBS Television Network on May 18, 2023.

The FCC has rules against broadcasting emergency alert tones outside of emergency alerts because their regular use in programming might desensitize viewers and listeners, causing them to ignore actual emergency alerts.

The FCC issued several significant fines regarding a variety of EAS rules in 2024, against such companies as ESPN and Charter Communications.

The investigation into CBS News Radio began after Paramount emailed the FCC on June 7 indicating that a news story concerning an event at Universal Studios “may have improperly transmitted or caused to be transmitted an EAS tone or simulation thereof,” the FCC said. The company said a top-of-the-hour newcast airing on 400 CBS News Radio affiliates at 4 p.m. (ET) on June 6 contained about three seconds of the EAS attention signal. Most affiliates carried the newscast, the FCC said.

The investigation into the daily syndicated entertainment newsmagazine “ET” was also prompted by an email from Paramount. “A brief excerpt of the broadcast EAS tones, lasting approximately one second, appears to have been aired during the October 24, 2023 episode of the program Entertainment Tonight,” the company reported.

The FCC also said it became aware the May 18, 2023, episode of the sitcom “Young Sheldon” airing on the CBS Television Network “might have included an improper use of EAS Tones,” prompting an investigation. The EAS tones occurred during a scene in an episode titled ”A Tornado, a 10-Hour Flight and a Darn Fine Ring,” in which some of the show’s characters are driving in a car in severe weather and become aware of an impending tornado, the FCC said.

The full order and consent degree can be found here.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton have proven to be two of the deadliest storms in recent history in the U.S., causing unimaginable pain and suffering. The economic impact on the affected regions will be in the billions of dollars. Although Helene hit North Carolina as a tropical storm, it still packed wind gusts of 100-plus miles per hour and dumped unprecedented amounts of rain resulting in a hundred or more fatalities.

This event touched us personally as our daughter, living in Asheville, was in the middle of the event and lost power, means of communication and even water. The storm wreaked havoc with roadways, bridges, water and electrical utilities, fuel delivery and food supplies. Relief teams of compassionate, dedicated people are doing their best to restore normalcy to the region. All should be applauded for their dedication during this trying time.

Cellular Vulnerability
Radio and television broadcasters have for decades provided critical information to viewers and listeners during times of crisis through their newscasts, live feeds and, more recently, their web/app/social media services. From the early days of the Emergency Broadcast System to the Emergency Alert System (now tied to FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System), we have utilized a robust network that provides state and local emergency management officials an avenue to provide critical information to the public.

But we live in a world now highly dependent on cellular communications. In these types of disasters, cellular and wireline communications are often affected significantly. Depending on the population served, cellular communications systems can require multiple cell tower sites. The higher the population, the more sites are needed. And, with 5G technologies, their higher operating transmission frequencies and shorter reception range, even more towers are needed.

Broadcast television utilizes tall-tower, high-power transmission facilities that cover a large area from a single site in a frequency range that is optimal for small receivers. Comparing cellular and broadcast, a friend in the public safety communications community once commented to me, “You have far fewer tower sites to defend in an emergency.” Broadcast television facilities can be affected by weather, but with careful planning and maintenance they have proven to be very dependable. The same goes for radio broadcasters. Although more than 1.5 million customers lost power in the Carolinas, very few broadcast facilities failed.

Better Tech on the Horizon
TV broadcasters around the country are in the process of upgrading systems to NextGen TV technology, powered by ATSC 3.0. Along with better pictures, sound and reception, it has other new features. Television news departments, utilizing NextGen TV broadcasting, will have the ability to issue far more detailed notifications to viewers to help them navigate through these difficult times through lifesaving “AWARN” advanced emergency alerting and messaging with rich multimedia content and geotargeting.

Also Read: PBS North Carolina CTO Fred Engel Discusses ATSC 3.0-Based First Responder Pager System

NextGen TV allows for data delivery independent from audio or video streams. PBS North Carolina has shown how this datacasting capability can be used to improve communications to first responders. Through a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant, technology partners Device Solutions Inc. and Triveni Digital built a very robust system that can cover over 10,000 square miles.

In 2023, after the widespread cellular communications failures in the California and Hawaii wildfires, when hundreds of people lost their lives, the FCC issued a request for methods to deliver Wireless Emergency Alerts through alternative means, including the use of satellites, when cellphone tower sites are down. PBS North Carolina responded to this request, describing how the NextGen TV technology developed for first responders could easily be adapted for civilian notifications.

We are still reeling from the effects of Helene. We can never replace those lost. We will struggle to rebuild, but we will. The broadcast industry will soon have the tools to provide critical emergency communications to civilians driven by NextGen TV. We must accelerate the adoption of this technology to bring lifesaving applications to the public.

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y.—Digital Alert Systems and video compression tech specialist Ateme today said they will collaborate on Emergency Alert System (EAS) integration, making it more efficient and cost-effective for broadcasters and cable operators.

The partnership adds Digital Alert Systems’ EAS-Net device networking protocol to Ateme’s TITAN line of SD, HD and UHD encoders. The integration allows Digital Alert Systems’ DASDEC flexible emergency-messaging platforms to connect directly to Ateme solutions via a simple network connection, eliminating the need for added hardware or software to provide full EAS text crawl and audio capabilities across all streams from the Ateme units.

“We are pleased to offer EAS-Net within the TITAN encoders to streamline airchains, reduce potential points of failure, increase redundancy and reduce costs,” ATEME Director of ATSC Sales Fred Ramsey said. “Digital Alert Systems and its EAS-Net interface are the gold standard for emergency alerting. We have the highest regard for the system and are eager to enable our customers to benefit from this advancement.”

Prior to the integration, linking DASDEC and the Ateme solutions required a combination of the legacy SCTE-18 protocol with an MPEG-2 transport stream for audio, resulting in a more rigid equipment configuration. The addition of EAS-Net introduces a new mode that supports hybrid virtualization at a significantly lower cost than previous methods. This makes it an attractive option for smaller broadcasters and those looking to implement more flexible, IP-based workflows, the companies said.

A key advantage of the integration is its ability to work across all streams in the Ateme encoding systems. Users no longer need one unit per stream or multiple DASDEC clients to support this comprehensive solution. This single-interface approach reduces equipment footprints and simplifies system design. The configuration process also has been greatly simplified, requiring only a network connection between the two systems. There are no restrictions on colocation, nor is there a need for additional hardware to provide fully compliant EAS text crawls and audio through the Ateme platform, they said.

“Teaming up with Ateme to bring this innovative solution to market is a real boon for our shared customers,” Bill Robertson, vice president of business development at Digital Alert Systems, said. “EAS-Net has become the de facto standard for linking equipment together for EAS information exchange, and the integration with Ateme shows how this protocol works around the facility and across multiple platforms for playout, automation and direct transcoder support. This level of flexibility allows broadcasters to select and implement newer, higher-performance equipment while maintaining seamless emergency alert capabilities. By integrating EAS-Net into Ateme’s encoder solution, broadcasters can ensure that critical emergency alerts reach viewers more efficiently and reliably.”

More information is available on the Ateme and Digital Alert Systems websites. 

The nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System in October produced much better percentages for both receipt and retransmission than a test in 2021, according to the FCC. But issues still remain. The test also revealed that the performance of EAS in several U.S. territories was significantly worse than in the states.

The commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau issued its report on the nationwide EAS test and the simultaneous test of Wireless Emergency Alerts.

This was the seventh nationwide EAS test; the first was held in 2011. The large majority of EAS participants, including radio stations, reported successful receipt and retransmission.

“The test demonstrated that the national EAS distribution architecture is largely effective as designed,” the bureau wrote, though it “also shed light on operational readiness failures that prevented some EAS participants to receive and/or retransmit the test alert.”

The test message was received by 96.6% of EAS participants, up from 89.3% two years prior. The overall retransmission success rate was 93.6%, up from 87.1%.

The bureau said that this “significant” improvement was likely due to initiation of the 2023 test alert via Common Alerting Protocol, which added resiliency, compared to the 2021 test, which was strictly done over the air.

But that still means that more than 6% of EAS participants failed to retransmit the alert and that more than 4% reported some kind of equipment-related complication during retransmission. “It is essential that the entire public be able to successfully receive alerts in order to take protective action during emergencies,” the bureau wrote.

Outdated Software
The nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System in October produced much better percentages for both receipt and retransmission than a test in 2021, according to the FCC. But issues still remain. The test also revealed that the performance of EAS in several U.S. territories was significantly worse than in the states.

The commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau issued its report on the nationwide EAS test and the simultaneous test of Wireless Emergency Alerts.

This was the seventh nationwide EAS test; the first was held in 2011. The large majority of EAS participants, including radio stations, reported successful receipt and retransmission.

“The test demonstrated that the national EAS distribution architecture is largely effective as designed,” the bureau wrote, though it “also shed light on operational readiness failures that prevented some EAS participants to receive and/or retransmit the test alert.”

The test message was received by 96.6% of EAS participants, up from 89.3% two years prior. The overall retransmission success rate was 93.6%, up from 87.1%.

The bureau said that this “significant” improvement was likely due to initiation of the 2023 test alert via Common Alerting Protocol, which added resiliency, compared to the 2021 test, which was strictly done over the air.

But that still means that more than 6% of EAS participants failed to retransmit the alert and that more than 4% reported some kind of equipment-related complication during retransmission. “It is essential that the entire public be able to successfully receive alerts in order to take protective action during emergencies,” the bureau wrote.

Where problems did occur, they involved equipment configuration issues, performance issues, audio quality issues, alerting source issues and clock errors.

“While test participants reported less than one-third as many performance complications as compared to 2021,” the bureau continued, “more test participants reported equipment configuration issues and equipment failures.” Outdated software was a notable issue.

“At the time of the test, approximately 23% of EAS equipment units representing over 4,500 EAS participants, were either using outdated software or were using equipment that no longer supported regular software updates.” Not surprisingly, equipment with software that is no longer supported had the lowest receipt and retransmission rates, 90% and 85%, respectively.

Of 72 National Public Warning System (Primary Entry Point) stations, two experienced technical issues receiving and retransmitting the alert, a decrease from seven of 76 NPWS stations in 2021 (approximately 9%).

These stations failed to receive the CAP alert via IPAWS as a result of internet issues. One specifically cited that their broadband internet service provider was experiencing an outage, while the other cited that the internet was “very slow.” These stations did not successfully receive the nationwide alert from the over-the-air sources that they monitored.

“As a practical matter, one way for EAS participants to reduce complications due to failure to receive the test alert, such as the complications discussed above, is to ensure that they monitor several independent sources of alerts,” the bureau wrote. “We also recommend that stations located far from NPWS stations consider the viability, technically and otherwise, of satellite sources of the broadcast alert.”

The test results suggest that EAS is far less reliable in U.S. territories.

Five of the six poorest-performing geographic regions were the Northern Mariana Islands (20.0% retransmission success), Guam (33.3%), American Samoa (66.7%), the U.S. Virgin Islands (88.9%) and Puerto Rico (89.7%).

The bureau noted that these territories “have been plagued by multiple tropical storms and typhoons in recent years including Super Typhoon Mawar affecting Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands in late May 2023, and Hurricane Fiona affecting Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto in September 2022.” It recommended that its staff engage with EAS participants there about this situation and work with the local emergency communications committees, if necessary helping to reinvigorate the SECCs and pursue enforcement actions, to ensure that EAS is effective.

On the Wireless Emergency Alert side, most respondents reported successful receipt of the WEA test message, though there were areas where WEA delivery can be improved, “such as ensuring more consistent delivery and resolving issues concerning alert message audio tone and vibration cadence.” This was the third nationwide WEA test, but only the second directed to all WEA-capable cellular devices. To reach all mobile devices, the WEA portion of the test was sent as a National Alert, which subscribers cannot opt out of receiving.

In conclusion the bureau recommended, among other things, that the FCC “adopt rules to improve the operational readiness of EAS participants and participating CMS providers, as well as ensure that EAS participants are installing software updates in a timely manner and have plans for replacing equipment that is no longer supported by the manufacturer.”

It offered recommendations for EAS participants and CMS providers to improve the reliability and reach of WEA and the EAS, including in the territories. And it recommended that Congress require all CMS providers to support WEA, which is not currently the case.

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World.

An open letter to American broadcasters:

Whether serendipity or luck; we seem to be in an exceptional place. As the following article summarizes, it seems that we have the only combination of assets and technologies that make for effective Emergency Mass Communications. There are no practical alternatives.

 With NVISA and FEMA in the lab, and what we hear from several milieus about the interest and willingness to invest in public safety, we are at a tipping point.

 Acting as if our goal is to return TV to its bygone role as primary alerting and informing appliance is not helping. Smartphones dominate and “mobile first” is a respectable adoption strategy.

 Everything good and bad with emergency communications occurs at the user interface. No one is happy with the current brain-dead, inconsistently alerting everyone everywhere, test it until no one listens state of affairs.

 Sure, with 3.0 we have vastly better distribution and IP support, and presently broadcast news is uniquely the highpoint of electronic mass communications in crisis—but none of that matters without a national, universal, quality app and first-rate user experience.

 It’s time to ask Congress/FEMA/FCC… the people who represent and protect us from invasion to tornadoes… to build what saves lives and property with our 3.0/broadcast assets. Intentionally or accidentally, broadcasters have already done their part. We have coverage and a protocol begging to be used.

The field piece of development is probably best done in the "Switzerland" of PBS/CPB. The lab should be FEMA’s. The broadcaster’s role going forward is to make sure this works with and enhances our news and our other assets.

 Or maybe there is a better path?

Fred Baumgartner

This article originally appeared in The Spectrum Monitor and is the third in a series about NextGen Broadcasting:

Radio and public safety have always and forever been bound together. The lives radio has saved and the reduction in human suffering is colossal. The Spectrum Monitor (TSM) readers, especially first responders, know this in ways others do not.

Mass communications during an emergency has been broadcasting’s highest calling. For the most part, outside of weekly (or more often) testing of the Emergency Alert System (EAS), broadcast isn’t about emergencies—until it is. A major fire, hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, eruption, industrial accident, etc., does tend to completely consume broadcast media’s attention when it occurs. 

Historically, both amateur radio and broadcast justify their spectrum grants with the public role they play when things go badly. The FCC takes this very seriously, issuing more notices of violation and fines for EAS than any other infraction.

In 1990, AM radio was king, the World Wide Web was born, a radio telephone call needed an operator to assist, local TV news was an hour a day, and NOAA weather radio (NWR) was sparse. When EAS was launched in 1997, we were just learning that simply ringing the alarm bell was not enough, and frequently unintentionally deadly. Our world, threats and especially our behaviors have changed since then.

The Digital Era
Smartphones... Emergency Mass Communications (EMC) is smartphones. When people evacuate, they do not take their TVs with them. Only a very few scramble for their wind-up AM radio. People in danger take their purses/wallets and… phones.

The singular and growing dependance on smartphones for most human-to-human and human-to-machine interactions is fact.

Humans over the age of five have their smartphones with them at all times. If you need your phone to start your car, park, open a hotel room door, order a hamburger, shop, or your location is being tracked by friends, family and advertisers, you know the disconnected, helpless, empty feeling of having misplaced or discharged your phone.

There is some investigation that suggests that smartphone dependency has the unintended consequence of increasing milling time. AEA/AEI on the other hand, directly ties critical information to the alert, thus eliminating search time and one would think reduce milling saving lives.

Natural Hazards Center Director Dennis Mileti (1945-2021) defined and studied “milling” as EAS was being developed. It is human nature for people to want to validate and spread the word of an emergency following an alert. Milling wastes valuable time and is often fatal. 

It’s not all bad; spreading the word quickly is probably why survival rates are highest in tight/dense communities. Milling ends, and survival activities begin, when the crisis “becomes real,” to the participants. In a world of two-minute emergencies, there is no time to search or text, just time to act.

WEA predates the smart in smartphone. About five years into WEA, several emergency alerting apps made bids to intelligently fill the information gap. FEMA, the Red Cross, some schools, companies, and many local emergency management offices, and much of social media, offer many apps that residents can subscribe to… so many that there are posts and sites dedicated to advising which emergency apps and how many anyone should have on their phone. This fragmented EMC delivery.

By their nature, these apps address pieces of EMC, not the whole of EMC. The apps that focus on a few threats, where there is some intelligence (usually in the form of a local emergency management office or weather service) work well for their sphere of emergencies. The local or county emergency management office that invested in an app to deal with wildfires and has diligently marketed their app to citizens with the time and patience to download and the skills to configure the apps and maintain them, does well in their narrow circumstance. 

Social media that scrape other sources for the grist that they warp into the attention-grabbing notifications that fuel and package EMC in click bait, might be notably delayed, unreliable, and soaked in crowd sourced misinformation… but they do work.

Bottom line? The state of EMC is a fragmented mix of the ancient and many emerging apps.

Missing Platform
It seems logical that that EMC should use every distribution platform it can. Radio, TV, Wireless, and social media (for better or worse) are ubiquitous. Signage and sirens (the ones with voice message speakers being most useful). However, streaming and satellite don’t help and cable support ranges from nonexistent to rather mature and well developed.

Arguably, smartphone dependence is so domineering that no other platform is required. As our dependence on smartphones continues to increase, soon enough the people reached by broadcast radio, etc., will become insignificant. But, if life is precious, and not everyone has their smartphone on their person, and wireless isn’t 100% reliable, it makes sense to alert on all platforms simultaneously… if for no other reason than to alert people to check their phones.

In addition to smartphones, NextGen Broadcast’s AEA/AEI (Advanced Emergency Alerting and Advanced Emergency Informing) is a good fit for cable, satellite, and internet.

Smart is Good
Some think that technology constantly pushes intelligence to the edge. Nowhere does this make more sense than in EMC. In EAS, and WEA, the radio, TV or device is dumb. It simply makes noise or displays the messages that are broadcast to it and every other receiver. In EAS, there is “where, what, when” information encoded in the FSK signaling we hear at the start of every alert. 

This information allows EAS decoding receivers—a small brain is required—to activate when wanted. Most people might own an automatic NWS radio, but home EAS receivers are rare. The only people who directly receive an EAS activation are those watching or listening to a participating station where everyone gets everything because unlike AEA/AEI, EAS supersedes programming. 

This forces the broadcast station into a “Sophie’s choice” situation as to what alerts are passed on. Is a tornado on the edge of the coverage area worth interrupting the Dallas Cowboys game? WEA is somewhat better, but the practical installations are still challenged to effectively target EMC. Occasionally waking to a 2 AM Amber alert for an adjacent state is where the state of WEA is after 10-years.

For EMC, a smart, location aware device that is always with us is a godsend. The smartphone has already displaced weather radios… along with cameras, watches, cash… 

Want the same functions on a TV? There are only man-made barriers to this. Developing AEA/AEI on smartphones and gateways is fairly straightforward. These are well known mature and stable environments. Porting AEA/AEI to TVs is fairly easy for those TVs that have the memory, processing power, hooks, and storage to support it. Developing on multiple TVs from multiple manufacturers? … no one has that much money or patience.

Smartphones have an amazing user interface with incredible flexibility and full bidirectional connection. TV remotes are inflexible molded plastic devices with a few or many molded buttons. The best you can say about TV remotes is that navigating information is ugly. Some TVs use smartphones as a remote control (so called “second screen”). In this case, the TV becomes superfluous.

Assuming the code isn’t written with the same process that gave us healthcare.gov and is more like the low friction apps you find while online shopping (and there is adequate intelligence behind it) AEA/AEI solves all the problems we’ve substantiated since EAS was adopted. 

First and foremost, AEA/AEI stops over-testing, over-alerting and mistargeting. Second is the availability of critical follow-on information. Having to search on an overloaded network for life and death information kills people. Language and disability access are no longer obstacles.

Bottom line? EMC is about smartphones. With a smart, well-designed, self-configuring, pre-installed app—AEA/AEI resolves the human behavior issues and user limitations—even the ones we inadvertently created.

UHF High Power
Smartphones on the wireless network have one serious, fatal, but resolvable limitation. In any medium to major crisis, the wireless network collapses.

While broadcast supports an infinite number of simultaneous users, common carrier wireless cannot support the flood of individual demands for information typical in an emergency. The capacity required does not exist. Intuitively, one would think that when the network chokes, the milling time increases dramatically and of course the lost information would have often been lifesaving. 

Wireless requires multiple towers with often single-thread interconnect. This wireless architecture is far more fragile than broadcast which tends to be hardened, staffed and secured with backup power and everything else. When a wireless carrier or a tower fails, the people it serves are disconnected. When a high-power UHF broadcaster fails… the receiver simply retunes to the next strongest signal of many.

UHF is vital. UHF is necessary for building penetration and its big service area. It also needs to be built into the smartphone. Qualcomm put UHF TV into cellphones a decade ago, but no one has been able to do acceptable AM or FM reception. TSM readers know well the laws of physics and the inferiority of VHF and MW transmission in an urban or indoor environment.

In an emergency, you want to “carpet bomb” the population with a multitude of resilient high power RF. Wireless is extremely useful as events evolve, but EMC distribution shouldn’t rely on a low power, countless single-points-of-failure system that can’t survive a “scraped earth event.” 

Further, the complex and exposed wireless network is vulnerable to cyber-attack and instabilities. Consider that AT&T, including Firstnet (the wireless service that AT&T contracts to independently serve first responders) failed nationally on Feb. 22, 2024 for hours. In July 2022, KDDI in Japan and it’s 39 million customers experienced, “…the biggest glitch in our history,” according to KDDI chief Makoto Takahashi, taking the entire system down for two full days. Rogers Canada has had multiple outages over the last three years impacting all of its Canadian customers. 

And it’s not just wireless carriers. CenturyLink took three states of their internet customers “off the air” pre-Covid.

The unfailing and simple architecture of broadcast makes it much less likely to fail or fall victim to cyberattack. There has never ever been a time or event where more than one broadcast signal didn’t survive.

Intelligence
EMC is only as good as the information disseminated.

“Rich media,” beyond simple text, audio and video, is valuable. Searchable data, maps and visuals are very useful, expected, and rare. Emergency management organizations generally have neither the staff, equipment, nor expertise to prepare much more than simple text alerts. 

TV news organizations are the American machine that aggregates information from all of the stakeholders, federal, state, and local governments, power companies, utilities, first responders, and the scene itself. Broadcast news can put cameras on the ground and in the air and put authorities in front of a microphone. Nothing new here. Broadcasters routinely forgo advertising revenues to cover major news of emergencies. However, legacy alerting is at best loosely attached to news.

Indispensably, broadcast news has the relationships to validate information.

NextGen AEA/AEI
Conelrad, EBS, EAS, WEA, sirens, signage, are or were all alerting systems under the control of broadcasters and to some degree emergency management, that could interrupt programming so that sometimes on-air talent or automated weather service speech synthesis can speak to the situation. 

AEA/AEI directly connects all of emergency management to a user’s smartphone where the decisions of what to alert for and in what manner are made under the user’s control. AEA/AEI can share information in the manner that we are used to, without pre-NextGen broadcasting’s analog era limitations.

NextGen AEA/AEI smartphones (and other equipped devices like TVs) periodically check for AEA/AEI messages in addition to alerts via native WEA. For the OTA part, there is a balance between battery life and urgency. When a pair of bits in the ATSC 3.0 bootstrap (the lowest most secure data path) indicate that there is a message, the smartphone grabs it and runs it through filters. 

The filter asks if this affects my location and if this is a situation where people should be notified or awakened. An Amber alert might wait until people wake up. An F-5 tornado in the neighborhood demands immediate attention.

No television station has to decide whether to interrupt programming, because AEA/AEI unlike EAS… doesn’t interrupt programming. On a TV, the video squeezes back, and there are three loud “attention” beeps with a text crawl. A viewer can dismiss, dig deeper… or grab the smartphone, which is doing the same things, and run for cover.

Every AEA alert is on every transmitter nearly simultaneously and goes to every phone without delay. Following the “in emergencies, all delivery methods are used” guidance, the internet and wireless are also useful paths. Ideally, the phone sees the same message from many places—and filters out the redundancies.

Where are We?
Both EAS and WEA have devolved into systems that neither broadcasters nor wireless providers have a positive incentive to maintain or improve. The public and emergency community complain about both. The last time we heard anything about EAS, broadcasters through the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) got Congress to force car manufacturers to continue support of AM radios, claiming that AM/EAS plays a critical role. 

The reality is somewhat nuanced. 

Today, “full service” radio stations are almost always AM/FM or FM only; only larger metropolitan areas support the necessary full-service station. While radio news operations have declined, TV and digital news has boomed. Radio on the dashboard is far more difficult and distracting to tune than the days of five buttons and a tuning knob. When you see “tune to 1610” traveler information signs while driving a rental car, you are unlikely to figure out how to listen safely without first pulling over.

My own experience is that I have not received a useful emergency message via my AM radio in many years. On the other hand, my cellphone has warned me of bad weather and with the help of the smartphone, I have navigated around hail, etc. at least a few times each year. AM radio used to do that, but not anymore—which is OK because the smartphone does this so much better—WEA messages are even displayed on my dashboard via the car/phone handsfree Bluetooth link.

As you might expect, most of broadcaster’s activities surround reducing their investment in EAS (including NAB and largely iHeart’s move to virtualize EAS to avoid replacing hardware), news and other staff intensive programming.

EAS does little good for broadcast news, sometimes interrupting live tornado coverage with a less informed and often delayed NWS issued tornado warning. Broadcasters, especially the ones that embrace the vision of a broadcast digital news operation that is ubiquitous, interactive, and low friction, do have motivation to develop AEA/AEI. 

It expands the news department’s reach and gives them a lower friction platform for disseminating information from the trivial to the ultra-critical. AEA/AEI builds on and can deepen a station’s relationship with its viewers. Unfortunately, EAS drives viewers and listeners away with constant false alarms, tests and untargeted use.

So Where is the NextGen EMC Application?
The broadcast app that supports AEA/AEI has yet to be written. There have been several starts, each of which stalled at the mockup stage. We’ve seen what it might look like, but not how it works.

Unfortunately, vaporware is impossible to demonstrate and very difficult to describe outside of abstractions. If you want to show emergency management, broadcasters, regulators, or the general population AEA/AEI, we will have to build it.

Within ATSC is the “I-team.” The only implementation effort under the ATSC umbrella is to develop AEA/AEI. In the I-team’s long history, they have only had access to BAs (aka "Broadcast Apps" installed on the smartphone by the broadcasters) that function on an EAS level, meaning that they have yet to experience a BA that does the advanced filtering functions, or supports rich media information dissemination. ATSC and their I-team have nothing close to a deployable AEA/AEI app.

As this is written, NVISA and FEMA have set up a NextGen Emergency Mass Communications laboratory in Maryland. This is all very good. For now, without an AEA/AEI app and mobile devices, all that can be done here is to play with TVs and basic prototype BAs able to do little more than alarm. When we do have a BA, this is the place to test it and make it work before it is released into the real world. FEMA has a test version of IPAWs very useful for this.

3.0 Enabled Smartphones
NextGen AEA/AEI depends on a smartphone running an AEA/AEI app that receives information via the wireless network when available, and information embedded in NextGen UHF Broadcast high power, big tower transmission when wireless access becomes impossible.

India seems to be the place where NextGen smartphones are taking off. Not so much in America.

Next Step
Without a BA and 3.0 chips in smartphones, we do not have resilient, intelligent EMC.

For broadcasters, what revenue potential there is in funding the BA is maybe from licensing what has never been licensed before (EAS is public domain) and/or betting that broadcast news can someday benefit from the AEA/AEI platform. It is also uncomfortable for broadcasters to depend on a competitor for a critical piece of broadcast architecture. 

There have been rumors of various players crafting a proprietary BA, usually more focused on monetization issues than AEA/AEI. So far, there is no AEA/AEI progress. There have been two efforts to cooperatively advance this endeavor within the industry. 

NAB Pilot’s effort ended quietly, apparently lacking broadcaster support and some member opposition to NAB supplying a universal “free” app. Later, NVISA invited broadcasters and vendors to cooperatively do such. NVISA (NextGen Video Information Systems Alliance) received no response from the major players.

As mentioned above, ATSC’s I-team dedicated to AEA/AEI implementation has no resources beyond the power of the regularly scheduled meeting. Also, ATSC is a standards organization, so as one would expect, implementation—as much as it is needed—is well outside ATSC’s tradition and resources.

AEA/AEI serves the public good. As a nation, we do invest in our security and safety. In 2006, Congress put $106 million into the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) Act. This funded Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) as well as other upgrades to EMC. More recently, congress has designated funds to upgrade EMC, in several different “buckets.” While AEA/AEI is likely the most important thing we should do, a lot more expensive and less important things seem to be on current agenda.

This is also close to the charter of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, who with PBS, have a history of nurturing similar technologies such as closed caption in the early 1970s. That lead to the passage of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990. PBS has been active in the EMC field with WARN, a system that backs up IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert & Warning System) internet delivery. There have been several NextGen proof-of-concept demos within public broadcasting for the benefit of first responders and EMC.

It is also better that there be just one AEA/AEI BA that operates in a manner where everyone everywhere can easily understand it and navigate. Competing BAs can create unnecessary friction. This is software and NextGen is “extensible,” meaning that the system can be updated and fine-tuned over time.

The bottom line is, that if we want reliable and powerful Emergency Mass Communications, FEMA and the FCC, if not congress, have to say so.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—PBS North Carolina with industry partners this week told the Federal Communications Commission in comments that Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) can be successfully delivered to cell phones via ATSC 3.0 with the aid of portable, companion 3.0 receivers and that their proposal can successfully address the problem with cellular network fragility during wildfires, severe storms and other disasters.

The joint filing made by the public broadcaster, North Carolina Emergency Management, Device Solutions, Triveni Digital and Digital Alert Systems, is in response to a request from the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau seeking partners to test expansion of coverage for wireless emergency alerts. 

(ONE Media separately filed comments in the matter. See “ONE Media NextGen Broadcasting Can Fill Gaps in Wireless Networks During Emergencies.”)

“ATSC 3.0, with its Internet Protocol backbone, allows for the delivery of not only television broadcast streams but data in a robust, highly efficient manner,” the filing said. 

The filing described PBS North Carolina’s development of a 3.0-delivered notification system with the assistance of the other filers that complements the state’s existing analog voice paging system for first responders. The effort led to the demonstration of a digital paging system using 3.0 to reduce the time needed to deliver dispatch information to responders, the filing said.

“PBS North Carolina believes that the technology developed for the paging effort could easily be adapted to address the need the FCC” identified in seeking to bolster wireless networks in emergencies, it said. 

The filing envisions the integration of emergency alerting systems already in place at a large majority of broadcasters around the country with the enhanced dissemination capabilities of 3.0 and redistribution of alerts via formats like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to consumer devices—with the added benefit of rich multimedia.

“…[W]hat if there was the ability to send additional information, critical to civilians to not only warn them, but to give them instructions and mapping directions to seek safe evacuation during a crisis?” the filing asked. “PBS North Carolina, working in concert with North Carolina Emergency Management, is exploring the ability to use existing, enhanced mapping data to provide the civilian population instructions and options to avoid hazardous routes, provide safe evacuations routes, and perhaps provide direction to needed resources.”

The public broadcaster pointed out that without complementary 3.0 emergency data delivery, the public could be left without map data. However, the proposed 3.0-delivered data approach, working in tandem with the internal GPS capability of the cellular device, could make it possible “to overlay the location information on top of the mapping information sent in parallel with the WEA data,” the filing said.

The filing also reminded the bureau that America’s public television stations already serve as a nationwide broadcast backbone relay network for WEA using the existing infrastructure of public stations as mandated by the Congressional “WARN” Act and funded by the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration. 

“As described by FEMA, this ‘Warning, Alert, Response Network’ provides a backup dissemination method of Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) should IPAWS [Integrated Public Alert and Warning System] connection to wireless providers ever be interrupted,” it said.

It concluded by telling the bureau that 3.0 has shown itself to offer coverage “well beyond the expected modeling” from PBS North Carolina’s WUNK NextGen TV station in Greenville, N.C. 

“Consumers are better served by WEA alerts being available at low cost (device and infrastructure), on more devices, and with more reliable up-time, and improved coverage and penetration,” the filing said

The chief financial officer of the state of Florida wants the FCC to “immediately halt any further utilization” of Wireless Emergency Alerts on a national level.

Jimmy Patronis, who also serves as the state’s fire marshal, addressed his letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. He took issue with use of the WEA platform to send the nationwide emergency text message to cellphones and wireless devices in early October:

“What was the point of that? Was it really necessary? The federal government scared about 70% of Americans with that alert, and in my opinion, this was government overreach at its finest,” Patronis wrote in the letter. (Read it here.) 

The FCC and FEMA conducted the national tests of WEA and EAS public warning systems on Oct. 4.

Patronis in his letter admonished the FCC for directly reaching out to citizens on their electronic devices. “I don’t like systems where the federal government can access Americans directly to their smartphones. Frankly, I don’t like the idea of any administration (regardless of party) having the ability to DM Americans without their permission,” Patronis wrote.

Patronis, a Republican, has served in Florida’s cabinet since 2017. According to his bio, Patronis is a fourth-generation Floridian who previously worked in his family’s restaurant business. He is a former member of the state legislature.

His letter continued: “Trust in our nation’s ruling class is at an all-time low and for good reason. In a time when the first and second branches of government should be reining in Big Tech and protecting the privacy of American citizens, Big Tech and Big Government seem to be indistinguishable. … In my opinion, there is absolutely zero reason that the federal government needs to notify millions of Americans at the exact same moment. It’s unreasonable that people on the West Coast need to be alerted about something going on in the East Coast,” he said.

Patronis says emergency alerting should be left to each state to handle. “State emergency management directors are more than capable of protecting and alerting their own citizens during emergencies without the federal government needlessly getting in the way.”

He concludes his letter: “I urge you as the chairwoman of the FCC and a fellow taxpayer to immediately halt any further utilization of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your prompt response.”

Rosenworcel has sought to expand the capabilities of WEA by making them more accessible to people who don’t speak English or Spanish. In October the FCC adopted rules expanding the language capabilities of WEA by adding more bilingual alerts.

Replying on Friday to a Radio World request for comment, an FCC spokesperson wrote by email: “Life-saving emergency alert systems are the law, as is the requirement that FEMA conduct periodic nationwide tests, and they are responsible for setting the date and time of these tests. The FCC strongly supports emergency alerting, which save lives in communities across the country.”

The commission on its website describes Wireless Emergency Alerts as “an essential part of America’s emergency preparedness. Since its launch in 2012, the WEA system has been used more than 84,000 times to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children and other critical situations—all through alerts on compatible cell phones and other mobile devices.” It notes that wireless companies volunteer to participate and that it is the result of a public/private partnership between the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the FCC and the wireless industry.

The letter produced some eyerolling on an EAS listserv maintained by the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

“I guess he is just unaware that we’ve had national alerting for at least 70 years, beginning with CONELRAD,” one engineer wrote. Another called his letter “political pandering … no, it’s scaremongering and nothing more.”

This article originally appeared on TV Tech sister brand Radio World. 

Ken Burns. Mister Rogers. Downton Abbey. Earthquake warnings? Yes. While famous for producing educational programming for the American people, public television also plays an indispensable role in ensuring the public’s safety.

Using a portion of their FCC-licensed spectrum to send encrypted emergency information to law enforcement and first responder agencies:

• California’s public television stations are working with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services to dramatically improve the standard warning time for earthquakes, from 30 seconds to one second.
• Alabama Public Television is the backbone for the state’s emergency alert system and provides extensive communications support for the departments of public safety and homeland security, the State Capitol Police, and 68 E911 centers throughout the state.
• In Texas, public television stations send real-time weather alerts, AMBER Alerts, school safety, flooding rescues, and hurricane and tornado warnings.
• New Mexico’s public television stations are expanding their signals to the “Bootheel” region bordering Mexico to provide emergency alerting and other public safety services, which may ultimately include border security.
• Vegas PBS in Nevada is the primary Emergency Operations Center for the Clark County School District, connecting schools, hospitals and first responders, and providing real-time alerts to the police department.
• At the national level, America’s public television stations have partnered with the US Department of Homeland Security to demonstrate our capabilities in over-water emergency communications, rural school safety, and helping law enforcement and first responder personnel to communicate better with each other.
• Just recently, millions of Americans’ cell phones were part of a successful test of FEMA’s National Wireless Emergency Alert System. But every day, America’s public television stations and PBS partner with FEMA to send cellphone users geo-targeted emergency text messages.
• And for decades, public television stations have provided the fail-safe path for communications from the President of the United States to the American people in times of national emergency.

We could do even more, and we hope to. Because of the one-to-many communications infrastructure of broadcasting, we have the potential to send highly-targeted, localized, multi-lingual, lifesaving messages –real-time video, a building blueprint, a picture of a missing child – to one or one million recipients simultaneously, without fear of overloading our capacity. 

Congress has funded the Next Generation Warning System program to help upgrade public broadcasters’ ability to respond to public safety challenges, particularly in rural areas and those underserved by internet providers. 

Properly equipped, public television stations could also enhance the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s nationwide weather alerting system, which is currently limited to radio-only communications but could be augmented with visual information including storm tracks, radar maps, evacuation routes, and recommended actions at the first sign of danger.

And with broadcast signals reaching 75 miles in every direction from our thousands of transmitters – each fortified against severe weather conditions and staffed full-time by professional engineers -- we are the obvious solution to many public safety challenges in rural America, where cell service remains elusive, expensive, and subject to the reliability of rural commercial power systems.

The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967’s “universal service” mandate — to provide all Americans with free, over-the-air access to public broadcasting's programming and services -- ensures that our signals reach almost 100 percent of the U.S. population. 

Public television stations are proud of our educational programming and services, proud of the civic leadership we provide as the “C-SPAN” of state governments and chroniclers of heartland America’s history, culture and public affairs.

But nothing is more essential than our work in public safety, and in partnership with federal, state and local authorities we are ready to play an even greater role in protecting the lives and property of citizens everywhere.

Craig Fugate is the former Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a member of the board of trustees of America’s Public Television Stations. Patrick Butler is president and chief executive officer of America’s Public Television Stations.

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y., and PRINCETON, N.J.—Digital Alert Systems, a provider of emergency communications solutions for media providers, and igolgi, a provider of  compression, encoding, and transcoding solutions for the broadcast, cable, LPTV, and PEG markets, today announced a new IP interface from Digital Alert Systems' DASDEC flexible emergency messaging platform to the igolgi product line. Anyone who uses igolgi iLux ATSC 1.0, iLux ATSC 3.0, and iLux XScale ATSC 1.0 encoders can now connect them to any DASDEC model with the Digital Alert Systems EAS-Net software interface over IP.

"With over 350 iLux ATSC encoders installed, the new EAS-Net connection will greatly simplify the EAS interface," said Jeff Zhu, iLux encoder product manager at igolgi. "Most of our users already use DASDEC, so this will be an easily installed upgrade."

igolgi encoders have been deployed with DASDEC Emergency Alert System (EAS) generators for 10 years with traditional physical interfaces. Previously there were four different ways of linking the DASDEC and igolgi products to provide an EAS interface. Each of those modes required either colocation of the equipment or additional third-party hardware to implement. Adding EAS-Net to the mix adds a new fifth mode to support hybrid virtualization and at a lower cost than the previous modes—especially important in the low-power market, according to the companies.

The configuration between the devices is greatly simplified because it requires only a network connection. There is no colocation requirement and no need for additional hardware or software to provide full EAS text crawl and audio through the igolgi platform. Moreover, this single interface works across all the streams in the igolgi units, eliminating the need to have one unit per stream or multiple DASDEC clients.

Using EAS-NET reduces equipment footprint, saving money, simplifying the design, and providing support for hybrid virtualization that further distinguishes unique forms of centralcasting and IP-based workflows. With EAS-NET, igolgi can now offer customers more flexibility in igolgi remote encoding or igolgi cloud encoding solutions for low- and full-power stations, and for both ATSC 1.0 and ATSC 3.0 encoding with remote DASDEC systems, the company said. And the seamless IP interface with EAS-Net means igolgi customers can take a hands-off approach to ensure all EAS warnings are displayed promptly and properly.

"EAS-Net is widely regarded as the de facto standard for linking equipment together for EAS information exchange. The alliance between Digital Alert Systems and igolgi ensures customers can use igolgi advanced encoders with the most reliable and flexible EAS system. This alliance also shows how broadcasters can use this standard around the facility and across multiple platforms for playout, automation, and direct encoder support," said Bill Robertson, vice president of business development, Digital Alert Systems. "This level of flexibility is important because it means they can select and fit newer, higher-performance equipment, usually at a lower overall price."

New rules concerning state EAS plans that were reported by TV Tech sister brand Radio World a year ago are now officially in effect.

Last June, the FCC released an order implementing provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2021. It adopted rules to improve both the Emergency Alert system and Wireless Emergency Alerts.

But aspects of those changes had to be approved by the Office of Management and Budget.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau now has issued an update.

Compliance with the following rules is required as of today, June 6, 2022:

• The section of FCC rules requiring commission approval or rejection of state EAS plans in 60 days;
• The section requiring annual submission of state EAS plans;
• The section requiring annual certification by State Emergency Communications Committees that the SECC met at least once in the prior year to review and update the state EAS plan before filing;
• The section facilitating EAS false alert reporting by government entities;
• And the section facilitating WEA false alert reporting by government entities.

Meanwhile, the rule requiring Commercial Mobile Service providers to update handset displays consistent with the name change from Presidential Alerts to National Alerts takes effect at the end of July.

The FCC said questions should be directed to Chris Fedeli of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau’s Policy and Licensing Division at christopher.fedeli@fcc.gov.

This article originally appeared on Radio World. 

WASHINGTON—Citing the goal of quickly and accurately informing the public about safety threats, America’s Public Television Stations and PBS (collectively PTV), supports the FCC’s efforts to increase submissions of false emergency alerts. It is something that PTV believes that it is already well-equipped to assist with.

The organizations submitted these comments in response to the FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that has proposed changes to the emergency alert system. Specifically, it seeks to “formalize and enlarge the process by which government entities may submit reports of false alerts to the commission.”

In its comments, PTV said that it is uniquely positioned to help increase the knowledge and transparency about how emergency alerts appear in real time with its PBS WARN System. It claims that PBS WARN would help lead to more reporting of false alerts, and thus help the FCC better study and strengthen EAS’s effectiveness and reliability.

More details on false reports will help the FCC better detect potential trends and patterns that need looking into to improve the EAS. PTV says that the current system relies on an awareness that a false alert was actually issued.  The new rules would encourage government entities to report a false alert if it “becomes aware of transmission” to the public.

Based on this proposed rule, PTV wants government entities to have an increased ability to be made aware of such false reports. To help with this, PTV suggests the FCC encourage and facilitate the development and support for tools and resources to help stakeholders identify false alerts.

PBS says that it has such a system in its Warning, Alert and Response Network (WARN). The PBS WARN system distributes all WEA messages to commercial mobile service providers across the country, with a reach to 97% of the U.S. population. It is connected directly to the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS). PBS WARN can be used to view both active and expired WEA messages based on location, alert type and date.

The PBS WARN system features two validation tools. First, users can confirm whether a WEA message was in fact transmitted through the IPAWS infrastructure and confirm the correct geographic location was selected. Second, the system can determine whether appropriate information was communicated to the public using Common Alerting Protocol.

“PTV believes that raising awareness about the PBS WARN System website as part of the commission’s efforts to report and reduce false alerts will ultimately result in much more accurate reporting,” PTV’s comments read.

However, the PBS WARN system is a federal grant-funded public safety initiative and is not currently funded for further enhancements beyond July 15, 2021. PTV therefore asks that the FCC be mindful of potential costs that might result from its NPRM proposed changes.

Congress wants better emergency alerting for the United States. So the Federal Communications Commission is working on several ways to accomplish that.

Among other things, the FCC wants to get state governments to improve their own alert coordination efforts. It wants to replace the WEA “Presidential Alert” with a “National Alert” that can be issued by the president or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, an alert that mobile users cannot turn off. And it wants to explore the possibility of alert dissemination via the internet.

The FCC, now under the leadership of Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, is taking public comments on proposed changes to the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alert system.

Many of the steps are mandated by Congress, so the question for the commission is not whether to take them but how. The FCC said it’s crucial that emergency alerts include accurate information and that any new procedures be trustworthy.

The EAS, as most Radio World readers know, is the national public warning system through which broadcasters, cable systems and other EAS participants deliver alerts to warn the public of impending emergencies and dangers to life and property.

While best known for local weather and other warnings and tests, the system’s primary purpose is actually one for which it has never been used: to allow the president of the United States to provide immediate communications to the public in a national emergency.

Broadcasters are required to carry presidential alerts; they participate in state and local alerts voluntarily. The FCC, FEMA and the National Weather Service implement EAS at the national level.

The reform push comes at the direction of Congress as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2021. The spending bill included the Reliable Emergency Alert Distribution Improvement (READI) Act, which gave the FCC its charge.

One industry observer said they were “pleased with the elegant solutions the FCC crafted to meet the congressional mandates.”

FOCUS ON THE STATES

For one thing, the commission wants the 50 states and the U.S. territories to do a better job at managing their part of the alerting infrastructure.

The states and territories would be asked to review the composition and governance of their State Emergency Communication Committees. Those SECCs would be required to meet at least once a year and to submit an updated EAS plan annually; the FCC would have to accept or reject each plan within 60 days. The commission also would provide a checklist of information to be included in state plans.

One longtime EAS observer told Radio World they are pleased to see the FCC finally include rules that say state EAS plans are to be administered by the SECCs, something that has been missing from the rules.

The FCC also proposes that state plans, currently posted on its website, would not be publicly available except for names and contact information of SECC chairs.

“Disclosure of the plans, at least in form where each plan is one place and in a uniform and easily searchable format, could highlight potential vulnerabilities that malefactors could exploit, thereby potentially hindering emergency planning efforts,” it wrote.

Another change would enable jurisdictions to report false EAS or WEA alerts to the FCC Operations Center when they occur. The commission said such a system would allow planners to learn from incidents like the false missile alert in Hawaii that was distributed in 2018.

EAS participants are already required to report false alerts, but there’s no system for other stakeholders to report them voluntarily.

REPETITION DISCUSSION

Congress also told the FCC to modify EAS to provide for the repetition of national security alerts issued by the president or FEMA. The commission devotes several lengthy paragraphs of its NPRM to the repetition issue and its associated mechanics.

The commission said the EAS system is already designed to allow repeated alerts from any originator as long as at least one minute has passed, but it said this capability may not be fully understood in the alerting community. It proposes to keep its rules regarding transmission and retransmission but add language specifying how an originator can repeat a message.

It thinks that automating the repetition of alerts, including setting the repetition intervals, should be achievable with “minimal changes” to alert software programs on the market, though it suspects that many encoder/decoder models would require modifications.

But it proposed that only the president or his or her designee be allowed to repeat the president’s Emergency Action Notification alert. It thinks that requiring EAS participants’ equipment to automatically repeat the alert would present technical impediments that may impair the president’s ability to issue EANs. For instance, requiring a predetermined interval of automatic repetition could cause problems in fast-evolving emergency situations.

It invited comments on a long list of questions including whether automatic (or manual) repetition of national security alerts by participants’ EAS devices is technically feasible. It also asked whether widespread repetition of state and local alerts might cause alert fatigue.

The NPRM also asks whether the FCC should adopt a National Command Authority (NCA) alert originator code for FEMA and whether it should create a National Security Event (NSE) event code for FEMA that would encompass “warnings of national security events, meaning emergencies of national significance, such as a missile threat, terror attack, or other act of war or threat to public safety.”

Veteran EAS observer Gary Timm said broadcasters should watch these developments closely, including the discussion about a methodology for repeating national-level alerts.

“The FCC proposed that the most obvious solution is for the alert originator to simply resend the message as many times as they desire it to be heard again. The other possibility the FCC presented is requiring EAS units to be modified to automatically repeat alerts, which could require money and time to upgrade at every station, if it is even feasible,” Timm said.

EAS experts told Radio World that the originator of an alert for any emergency should have complete control over the number of repetitions, the rate of repetitions, the update of old information to new, and the decision to end repetitions.

Harold Price, president of Sage Alerting Systems, said, “Having the originator reissue the message as needed, the FCC’s primary proposal, is the best path. Trying to automate repetition at the broadcast end adds a lot of cost throughout the EAS ecosystem, could make the system more fragile, and can result in message congestion and overlapping new and old information at a time when clarity is most critical.”

He continued: “EAS has always given any originator the ability to repeat information by simply sending an additional alert. This is a matter of training and procedures at the origination point, and perhaps modifications to alert origination tools to permit the easy reissuing of an alert. This is the best way to address the issue.”

Roy Baum, director of engineering and technology for Alpha Media in Topeka, Kan., said he is “adamantly opposed” to building any automatic repeat function into the existing alert generation system.

“If the emergency message is worth repeating, the entity generating the alert should review it and reissue it with updated information, presidential or otherwise. The current EAS equipment can handle this scenario without any problems,” said Baum, who chairs the Kansas State Emergency Communications Committee.

He said the EAS system was intended to be a “first alert” system, not a “continuous-flow-of-information” system.

'INFLEXIBLE'

Adrienne Abbott, Nevada’s state EAS chair, said broadcasters should pay close attention to the FCC’s planned directives to state governments, especially if there is a vacuum in emergency planning in a given state.

“If a state or local official has ever been denied a request for an EAS activation or feels that the broadcasters aren’t giving EAS enough attention, this is an opportunity for those officials to take over EAS,” Abbott said. “To me, this should be a warning to broadcasters to get more involved in EAS and the SECC.”

Larry Wilkins, director of engineering services for the Alabama Broadcasters Association and the state’s EAS chair, thinks that “overall, the EAS system works well” in his state, but said state-level committees can be a weak link.

“Some states just do not have an effective SECC with representatives from all those involved. In Alabama our SECC includes state emergency management, governor’s office, National Weather Service, state broadcasters association, state cable association and radio and television engineers,” Wilkins said.

“The more diversified the list of EAS contributors, the better.”

Another state chair thinks the FCC is focusing on national-level messaging when errors with local alerts and weather hazards tend to be far more common.

“I would hope that more attention would also be paid to local alerts,” said Mike Langner, SECC chair for the state of New Mexico. “Amber Alerts are frequently issued with insufficient information or in some cases too much irrelevant information. Many states now issue Silver Alerts, and, of course, there are already well established Blue Alerts.”

Langner’s primary concern is a lack of required training so that alert originators know exactly how to do it and how to avoid false ones.

“As I understand it, the failures so far have overwhelmingly been failures of human operators and not failures of the various systems’ hardware and software,” he said.

In addition, Langner says, the level of involvement by radio and TV managers in EAS planning tends to wax and wane.

“As stations are bought and sold and managements’ public service philosophies and practices change, State Emergency Communications Committees should be able to readily change monitoring assignments in state plans to reflect reality on the ground,” he said.

“Currently the system for changing monitoring assignments is cumbersome, requiring a waiver of the old monitoring assignments from the FCC. The system shouldn’t be so inflexible.”

ONLINE ALERTS

In addition to its NPRM, the commission issued a Notice of Inquiry to explore whether it is technically feasible to deliver EAS alerts through the internet, including through streaming services, and whether and how to use the internet to enhance the alerting capabilities of broadcasters and other current participants.

Several observers said the idea has merit.

“The current EAS rules do not require radio stations that carry EAS alerts, including presidential EAN alerts, to carry the alerts or tests on their internet streams,” one said.

“Should the commission eventually adopt the idea of sending EAS via internet streaming, broadcasters who are streaming their program may have to make routing changes depending where their EAS unit is located, which could be at the station or out at the transmitter site.”

Gary Timm, the Wisconsin SECC chair, said the commission should encourage all broadcaster EAS participants to include alerts on their internet streaming feeds, given that “an increasing number of people are listening to the radio via their internet-connected in-home speakers.”

In many cases, he said, streaming feeds at a broadcast station are upstream of the EAS encoder/decoder in the audio chain.

Adrienne Abbott in Nevada said it is likely there will be concern among emergency alerting experts about overuse of EAS and WEA.

“There also will probably be pushback by some in the EAS community on the additional requirements for reporting false EAS activations,” Abbott said.

Comments in PS docket numbers 15-91 and 15-94 are due April 20 and replies are due May 4. They can be filed in the FCC’s online comment system.

The separate notice of inquiry seeks comment on the feasibility of updating EAS to enable or improve alerts through the Internet, including from streaming services. Comments on that are due May 14, and replies are due June 14.

This story originally appeared on TV Tech's sister publication Radio World.

WASHINGTON—The FCC is looking to strengthen emergency alerting, proposing new rules on how the public receives alerts on their TVs, radio and mobile phones. The FCC will also look at the feasibility of delivering alerts over the internet.

As part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, the FCC was charged with adopting rules to boost emergency alerting in various areas. As a result, the commission adopted this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking with the goal of ensuring more people receive relevant emergency alerts, enable government agencies to report false alerts when they occur and improve the way states plan for emergency alerts.

The NPRM specifically seeks to:

• Combine the current “Presidential Alerts” category with alerts from the FEMA Administrator to create a non-optional alert class called “National Alerts;”
• Encourage all states to form State Emergency Communications Committees to help administer alerting on state level, or to review the composition and governance of existing committees and certify they met in the last year;
• Provide a checklist that should be included in annual submissions of state Emergency Alert System (EAS) plans and amend the process for FCC review of those plans;
• Specify that government agencies may report false emergency alerts to the FCC’s 24/7 operations center; and
• Require and ensure that EAS participants can repeat certain alerts over TV and radio when the government alert originator requests it 

In addition, a Notice of Inquiry was approved by the commission to explore the technical feasibility of delivering EAS alerts through the internet, including streaming services, and whether EAS participants can use the internet to offer advanced alerting capabilities to the public.

The FCC voted on these actions during its March Open Commission Meeting today, March 17.

WASHINGTON—The Federal Communications Commission is reminding U.S. broadcasters and other EAS participants of their obligations to comply with the Emergency Alert System rules, including ensuring that alerts are accessible to persons with disabilities.

Here is a link to the full advisory.

“In reporting on the most recent national level test of the EAS, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau noted improvements in key areas, but identified several issues that impair dissemination of EAS messages,” the Enforcement Bureau stated in a five-page published advisory.

“The 2019 Nationwide EAS Test Report noted, for instance, that EAS Participants must ensure that messages comply with the FCC’s requirements designed to make the message accessible to individuals with hearing and vision disabilities.”

The document reminded stations and others to upgrade their EAS software and firmware to the most recent versions; change default passwords; secure EAS equipment behind good firewalls; and synch EAS equipment clocks to the National Institute of Standards and Technology if the gear doesn’t automatically synchronize via the internet.

EAS participants also need to understand their role in the broadcast-based distribution architecture of the EAS, for instance what it means if you have a “participating national” designation. They need to know how to monitor multiple sources to ensure redundancy and reduce the possibility of message receipt failures; how to follow up with monitored sources when an EAS message is not received to determine the cause; and how to submit national test results.

Read the full text here.

HUNT VALLEY, Md.—Local TV news will become a real-time emergency information portal with the new broadcast technology being deployed in cities across the nation. ATSC 3.0—also referred to as “NextGen”—can automatically target the impact zone of an incident with pre-formatted alerts. This means less revenue lost to service disruptions, more relevance to viewers and more revenue options for broadcasters. 

“Currently, newsrooms and the Emergency Alert System are separate,” said Ed Czarnecki, chairman of the ATSC TGS3-10 Emergency Alert AHG Working Group and vice chair of ATSC Advanced Emergency Information Implementation. “This gives the station flexibility and control over content, and the audience controls what they want to see,” he said during a recent webinar—the second in a six-episode series on how to make money with NextGen TV. “It makes emergency information a value-added service that not only increases community engagement, but … may provide additional abilities to monetize the information.”

MAKING IT EASY

Emergency alerts cover an escalating spectrum of urgency, from traffic alerts to emergency evacuation orders. They often come from multiple agencies and tend to bypass the newsroom. NextGen changes that without throwing a wrench into the workflow.

“We want to work within the current workflow,” said webinar panelist Lane Michaelsen, group news director for Sinclair Broadcast Group. “What we want to keep in mind here is the user and producer experience, so that it’s not an additional mind game on either end.”  

Accordingly, Sinclair is developing alert templates that can go out as they are. Severe weather warnings, for example, can be pre-embedded with links to the station, a live camera, radar and perhaps a sponsorship. These can go out without being touched by a producer, or enhanced within the alert template with live video and additional information. Sinclair’s WJLA and Fox’s WTTG in Washington, D.C., are preparing to test this advanced alerting capability over a 60-day period to hammer out a turnkey workflow on the station side.

On the receiver side, geo-targeting is activated within the NextGen consumer device, so only those devices in affected areas will display the alert, which can run as a live-linked bug or a crawl concurrent with programming. With the exception of presidential EAS messages and tests, viewers decide what they want to see.

Panelist Dan Shelley, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, described this ability as a “game changer” that will improve newsroom workflow, “not the least of which because the phones won’t be ringing off the hook because you’re [a television station] in say, Kansas City, Mo., that has interrupted programming for your entire viewing area for a tornado warning in a fringe county. This will allow people in that county on the edge of your viewing area … to get all the information [they] need without affecting those not in the path of the storm.”

BROADCAST APP IS KEY

This advanced alerting capability rests on the NextGen Broadcast App, which will reside in receivers and enable user clickthrough for further information. It is also the foundation of geo-targeted advertising by ZIP Code, business district or other granular criteria. (More on NextGen Advertising in webinar No. 3, scheduled for Aug. 4 at 2 p.m. ET. Register here.)

What’s more, said panelist Jim DeChant, vice president of technology at News-Press & Gazette, the Broadcast App will underpin the ecosystem for reaching NextGen-enabled mobile phones, computers and TVs.

“The broadcaster app itself will have the look and feel of social media, so basically, instead of changing channels and doing different things on different devices, people will be able to access information in similar ways across all media,” he said.

DeChant also emphasized how integrating emergency information into the news workflow can affect communities in times of crisis. At News-Press Gazette, TV stations use bespoke workflow software that allows journalists to post stories from the field to digital platforms and the playout server simultaneously, in real time. NPG witnessed the power of this immediacy last August after a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, drove misinformation on social media and panic in the community. 

“Our newsroom was able, in real time, to show people what was happening in their community, and in about four hours time, we were able to calm the community down and give people the information they needed,” he said. “I see the emergency alerting system as being so core to this, and 3.0 being able to provide that user experience that will literally be the calming lifeline to a community.”

REACHING THE WIDEST AUDIENCE

Ultimately, advanced alerting will be effective proportionally to how many people see it, so it’s imperative to understand what gets attention as younger generations migrate away from TV. 

“It’s no secret that the audience is changing and along with it, the way news is consumed,” said Fred Baumgartner, director of NextGen TV Implementation at ONE Media and moderator of the webinar.

TV industry strategist and webinar series producer Josh Gordon weighed in with a recent survey* of more than 2,000 respondents that demonstrated how younger and older viewers prefer news stories that impact them differently. Looking across generations—Gen Zs 18-21; Millennials, 22-37; Gen Xers 38-53 and Boomers, 54-72— younger respondents prefer viewing news on mobile devices and have greater preference for news stories that surprise them; older viewers prefer large screen TVs  and have a diminished desire for news that surprises. Asked generically about local TV news, all age groups said it made them feel connected to their communities. Also, if there was something people wanted to know about their communities, they first turned to local TV news.

However, younger viewers said they preferred stories that “make me think” or “surprise me,” while older viewers  preferred “reports on issues I care about” and helped them “prepare for my day.” 

“Younger viewers are more opportunistic,” Gordon said. “They have access to their information all the time. It’s something to think about as we consider how to construct content that will appeal to a younger audience.”

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y.—Digital Alert Systems has made available the latest version, v4.2, of its Emergency Alert System software that supports its DASDEC-II and One-Net SE EAS devices.

The new version of the software offers features and improvements that are designed to expand the security measures already built into the software. This includes additional communications protocols for EAS-Net, the DAS communications protocol software that enables EAS data and audio transmissions over a TCP/IP network for up to eight EAS-Net compatible platforms.

Another new feature is the software Secure Socket Layer HTTPS certificate management functions, which allow users to perform things like selecting the web server certificate, adding new cert and key certificates, selecting different certificates and deleting a certificate. Users can also load and/or delete their own key/cert pairs.

There are also separate control toggles as part of v4.2 that enable users to control digital signatures selectively from various Common Alerting Protocol servers, with improved logging between servers for more information about CAP files. In addition, communication improvements for users of DAS’ Homogenous Alert Overseer are also available.

Any DASDEC-II or One-Net SE customer running v4.0 or v4.1 can download v4.2 for free. For customers not yet upgraded to v4, DAS has a price relief program that offers a discount on the normal upgrade fee, ranging from 20% to 60% through Sept. 7.

For more information, visit www.digitalalertsystems.com.  

SEOUL—The global development of ATSC 3.0 continues with an announcement over the weekend that South Korea has launched a UHD Emergency Alert Service that is based on ATSC 3.0 technology. The Korean Ministry of Information and Communication made the announcement during the 2019 Broadcast Industry Promotion Week.

The new system uses a terrestrial UHD broadcast network to deliver disaster related information, but at this time it will work in tandem, not as a replacement, for Korea’s existing telecom-based alert system. The Korea IT Times reports that the addition of ATSC 3.0 signals is meant to enhance the country’s alerting process by offering backup and covering “blind spots” not covered by telecom signals.

The EAS will be placed in bus, subway and multi-use facilities with large outdoor display screens. The system also has voice guidance based on text-to-speech technology to support hearing impaired citizens, as well as beacons and vibrometers for the visually impaired.

According to BusinessKorea, ATSC 3.0 receivers and displays were activated in bus and subway facilities in Seoul on the day of the announcement. There are plans to expand the new emergency service to other cities by 2021 and to be nationwide in 2022.

“These alert services, based on ATSC 3.0 next-generation broadcasting and communications technology, are expected to change the paradigm of information transmission,” Korea IT Times reported. “The Ministry of Science and ICT is planning to overcome the limitations of the current emergency alert and broadcasting services by refining the initial pilot services in cooperation with the Korea Communications Commission, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety and the Korea Meteorological Administration.”

“We applaud our colleagues in South Korea for their continued leadership in ATSC 3.0 deployment and, now, their activation of the UHD Emergency Alert Service," said John Lawson, AWARN Alliance's executive director. “Their deployment in Seoul of an end-to-end use case from the alert originator, to TV station transmission, to dedicated receivers on outdoor displays is really impressive. It’s a powerful, real-world implementation of Next Gen TV alerting—the first in the world.

“One of AWARN’s founding members, LG Electronics, remains an invaluable bridge for us to developments in South Korea. The AWARN Alliance has a memorandum of understanding with RAPA, the South Korean trade development organization, for a global alliance around advanced alerting. And we continue our dialogue with DigiCAP and other Korean tech companies about ways to work together. A leading possibility is interoperability testing with AWARN Alliance member companies and organizations.

“On our end, we focused on user experience (UX) development with emergency managers last year, and this year we’ve launched our initiative with TV news thought leaders to develop a framework for on-going emergency news and information. Consumer UX testing is also on our agenda. And our members continue their tech development for advanced alerting. I hope 2020 is the year we can put it all together and launch AWARN alerting on some stations here in the U.S. The leadership from our Korean colleagues sets a benchmark for all of us.”

Korea’s UHD Emergency Alert Service will be the center of a panel discussion during the 2019 NAB Show New York—“The Nationwide ATSC 3.0 Emergency Alert Service Now Being Built in Korea.” Peter Han, president and CEO of DigiCAP, who worked as a technology supplier for the EAS project, will participate in the panel with Lawson and Joonyoung Park, DigiCAP’s vice president and Fellow. The panel will take place on Oct. 17 during the conference.

“It's an extremely timely opportunity to learn more about the Korean launch and compare notes with our AWARN timetable," said Lawson.

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

WASHINGTON—The National Advisory Council (NAC) took a good hard look at the nation’s emergency alerting system and issued a set of 14 recommendations at its last session designed to identify areas of concern and opportunities for improvement.

The report, called “Modernizing the Nation’s Public Alert and Warning System” and issued on Feb. 15, broke its primary proposals into five themes related to IPAWS and emergency alerting:

• Improving Alerting Authorities’ Ability to Transmit Effective Alerts;
• Improving Public and Congressional Understanding of Emergency Alerting;
• Optimizing Technology;
• Identifying and Adopting Current and Future Technologies; and
• Initiating Cross-Functional Management and Administration of IPAWS

Each recommendation also included a timeline for estimated implementation of these new priorities and a checklist of things to consider.

There are a few clear themes that pop up across all 14 proposed themes. One of those is that it’s vital for the alerting community to establish a series of best practice procedures across all levels of the emergency alerting strata. Another is that there needs to be an additional effort placed on educating the public about alerting and how individuals should respond in case of an emergency.

For example, the top recommendation under the theme “Optimizing Technology” is that FEMA must lead the development of a comprehensive standard set of communication tools—be they visual images, pictograms, transcripts or captioning—so that a diverse population can easily understand an alert.

This is even more important as populations become increasingly diverse; it’s paramount that IPAWS ensure that people with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency receive and comprehend alerts in a timely manner, the report said. The report noted that uneven distribution of alerts in various languages was an issue during the 2018 Northern California wildfires.

“Local agencies, which originate most alerts, vary widely in their capacity to generate alerts in languages other than English,” said California’s Office of Emergency Services. That fire destroyed 18,000 structures and killed 86 people. “In many cases, this capability varies depending on which language-skilled staff happens to be on duty when an alert is required.” The report proposed, as an example, that FEMA develop a nationwide, standardized hazard symbol set for use by alert originators and for public outreach.

The report also proposed that FEMA develop a policy for redundant alert origination as noted in the section “Identifying and Adopting Current and Future Technologies.”

“Considering that a jurisdiction’s primary alerting capability can be compromised and/or fail during a catastrophic event, alternate alert origination is a critical life-saving capability,” the report said, pointing to the malfunctioning of the part of the alert system in Texas during Hurricane Harvey and the damage caused to the communications infrastructure in the Caribbean islands during Hurricane Maria. In the later case, emergency management officials were unable to issue a WEA alert to notify residents of where to find shelter, food and water.

The complete report includes details on estimated implementation time and key considerations for each proposal, such as staffing needs and equipment requirements.

LYNDONVILLE, N.Y. — Digital Alert Systems and Monroe Electronics have released updated IPAWS Certificate Authority credentials for the One-Net and DASDEC Emergency Alert System/Common Alerting Protocol encoder/decoders.

The update replaces a Federal Emergency Management Agency digital certificate that will expire Sept. 24, and IPAWS users who fail to update their equipment before the deadline could see this error message: “Event Log:Digital Signature VERIFICATION ERROR : Signer UNTRUSTED! Check for correct CAP decoder CA file.;”

“This is the second such certificate replacement this year, so we are actively working with FEMA IPAWS to look at methods for automating this update process and hope to have such a process in place before the next certificate update occurs in 2019,” said Monroe Electronics and Digital Alert Systems Senior Director of Strategy and Government Affairs Ed Czarnecki.

The field service bulletin and CA file are available now. One-Net and DASDEC customers should go to the website, download the bulletin for instructions, and link to the new file.

Digital Alert Systems provides R&D, manufacturing, sales and customer service for Monroe Electronics, One-Net and Digital Alert Systems brands. In October 2009, Digital Alert Systems merged with Monroe Electronics.

Emergency alerting officials in Minnesota will get a half-hour shot at simultaneously testing their local emergency alert and wireless alert systems this June.

The Department of Public Safety within the State of Minnesota requested authority from the Federal Communications Commission so that EAS participants and commercial mobile service providers could conduct a combined live Emergency Alert System and end-to-end Wireless Emergency Alert test on Wednesday, June 18 from 6:30 to 7 pm Central time.

An EAS test will be sent out using the Civil Danger Warning event code in Stevens County, Minn., with participation from eight surrounding counties. At the same time, a related test of WEA will be sent only to the city of Morris, Minn.

According to the state’s Emergency Communication Networks department, recent events in Hawaii demonstrate that it is essential that the public be familiar with WEA and EAS and that emergency managers be proficient both with the operation of the systems and with the decision-making processes that may need to be made before initiation of an actual alert.

[Read: NAB’s Matheny Testifies to Senate on Emergency Alerting]

The department told the FCC that the test would allow the state to build on its existing training and create a template and best practice plan for future testing of WEA and EAS. The overall goal of the test is to ensure that the WEA and EAS systems will work during an emergency, the group said.

The proposed WEA test message will read “This is a test of Stevens County Wireless Emergency Alerts. No action is required,” while the EAS test message will say “This is a test of the Stevens County Emergency Alert System. If there had been an actual emergency, further instructions would have followed, this is only a test. No action is required.”

Ensuring that the public is aware that this is only a test is a priority, the state agency told the FCC. The state agency said it set up a pretest outreach and coordination plan to ensure public understanding that the event is a test. The plan will be shared with public information officers in all affected areas, to first responder organizations, and distributed to traditional and social media outlets.

The state agency also said it would provide the FCC with a detailed account of any issues that occur in the distribution of the WEA and EAS tests.

The commission agreed to provide a waiver for conducting such a test in part because this instance will simultaneous involve testing of both the EAS and WEA. FCC rules otherwise prohibit unauthorized use of the WEA and EAS systems.

“We believe that a coordinated and combined test of the two systems is a likely reflection of what would occur in an actual emergency, i.e., that both WEA and the EAS would be used,” the FCC said in granting the waiver.

The FCC also noted the benefit in completing such a test of the WEA now as opposed to after May 2019, a move that may help ensure that WEA and the EAS can be effectively deployed in a coordinated manner during an emergency.

At its Jan. 30 Open Meeting, the FCC set a deadline of May 1, 2019, for wireless providers to support Spanish-language messages in WEA and extend the length of alert messages from 90 to 360 characters. A second deadline, for establishing an enhanced geotargeting and keeping messages available on mobile devices for 24 hours, is set for Nov. 30, 2019. Both were made in an effort to promote the wider use and effectiveness of WEA, particularly for state and local authorities to convey critical messages to their communities.

A similar waiver was granted earlier this year to In the Vail Public Safety Communications Center in Colorado to allow wireless providers to participate in a WEA test on May 2, 2018.

Comments are still being accepted in the FCC ECFS database for those wishing to weigh in on the feasibility of including multimedia content in WEA messages. Those comments can be submitted by May 29 in the FCC ECFS database using Docket 15-91. Reply comments will be due by June 11.

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ANCHORAGE, AK—Another emergency warning misstep seems to have occurred — this time in Alaska — when the National Tsunami Warning Center issued a supposedly routine communications test at 7 a.m. on Friday, May 11, that was interpreted as a real warning.

A truncated version of a routine tsunami test message was issued by the center, and then “broadcast as an erroneous warning over the Emergency Alert System in Alaska,” the agency said. According to the Anchorage Daily News, those watching TV or listening to the radio at 7 a.m. heard what seemed to be a tsunami warning for areas all along the West Coast of North America and Hawaii.

Although there was a short mention of a test message at the very end of the automated warning, the message seemed to be legitimate warning for coastal counties on the West Coast of North America, according to reporter Zaz Hollander with the Daily News.

Alaska resident Travis Neff told the Daily News that a warning broke in while he was driving to work and listening to an interview about North Korea on NPR.

“At that very moment the alert system began,” he told the newspaper in an email. “I was dumbfounded. It was such a macabre timing, so I was poised waiting to hear that it was 'just a test' and that never occurred.”

The message apparently did not reach the public in Oregon, Washington, California or British Columbia, and was received only by individuals in Alaska, the paper said. The test message did not go out to the public via any communication channels operated by the National Weather Service, nor were messages sent out over the Wireless Emergency Alert system to cellphones. No sirens sounded in tsunami-vulnerable towns like Seward or Kodiak and no message was transmitted over NOAA Weather Radio.

Chris Popham with the National Tsunami Warning Center told the newspaper that phones were ringing off the hook in the two hours after the alert went out. According to Popham, an oceanographer with the agency, those calls were the catalyst that let officials at the center know there was a problem.

“Nothing different happened in this office,” he told the paper. “We sent out the same test message we’ve sent for decades: ‘This is a communications test.’ We saturate it with ‘test.’ How that got interpreted as any sort of warning or advisory, I can’t say.”

At noon on Friday May 11, the National Weather Service released a statement saying that no tsunami warnings have been issued for Alaska. “There is no tsunami threat,” the statement said.

Agencies involved are investigating what happened.

A state emergency spokesman told the Daily News that the tsunami center coded the message properly as a monthly test and that the problem appeared to start with the state’s emergency communications network, EMnet, operated by Florida-based vendor ComLabs.

But Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for the state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, told the newspaper that an investigation was too preliminary to determine whether the problem was the coding, the network, or something that occurred at the interface of the two. The state is working to determine what happened, Hollander reported.

The situation is reminiscent of the false missile warning that occurred in Hawaii in January.

[Read: Human Error, Poor Safeguards Contribute To False Missile Alarm, FCC Finds]

Mike Chmielewski, chief operating officer for nonprofit Radio Free Palmer, told the paper that he called the nearby tsunami center after the message sounded and determined for himself that there was no tsunami. He then got on the air and reported to the public that there was no tsunami threat.

A notable downside to all this: Listeners may be compelled to dismiss future warnings, Chmielewski told the paper.

“The danger, of course, is the system is designed to alert people,” he said. “If there are too many false alerts …”

The National Tsunami Warning Center said it is looking into why the test message was distributed over the EAS system as a warning and will provide more information as it becomes available.

WASHINGTON—The numbers are in from the September 2017 National EAS Test, and they reveal a falloff in performance by television broadcasters when compared to the previous year.

A report issued last week by the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau tabulates and analyzes reports submitted by various media, including radio, TV broadcast, cable TV, IPTV and wireline, about their test performance.

TV broadcasters were “the least successful participants” in the nationwide test, the report said. It found 88.6 percent of TV participants successfully received the alert, and 83.5 percent successfully retransmitted it. The 2017 TV performance “shows a significant decrease as compared to 2016 when 97.3 percent successfully received the alert and 85.3 percent were able to retransmit,” the report said.

[Read: Hawaii False Alarm Illustrates Importance Of EAS]

Overall, 98.5 percent of participants successfully received the test alert compared to 95.4 percent in 2016. Nearly 92 percent of participants successfully retransmitted the test alert, up from 85.8 percent in the previous national test, the report said.

FEMA, in coordination with the FCC and the National Weather Service, conducted the nationwide test, which was the third of its kind, on Sept. 27, 2017. While intended to test the overall effectiveness and reliability of the system, special emphasis was given to testing FEMA’s Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), which acts as the gateway to disseminate Common Alerting Protocol-formatted EAS alerts, it said.

A total of 58.1 percent of participants reported first receiving the test over-the-air as opposed to via the internet from the IPAWS server, up from the 56.5 percent reporting over-the-air test reception in 2016. Participants that receive the test over the air are not able to deliver CAP-formatted digital audio, Spanish and text files, which provide greater accessibility for non-English speakers and those with disabilities, the report noted.

[Read: Initial Results Of 2017 National EAS Test Show Improvement]

There are about 22,922 EAS participants in the United States and its territories. Of those, 19,738 unique test filings were submitted, a participation rate of 76.2 percent. Several factors, including severe weather, wildfires and the aftermath of hurricanes, contributed to the falloff in participation from 2016 when 21,365 unique filings were submitted, according to the report.

TV broadcasters had the lowest participation rate in 2017 with 68.5 percent; cable TV, IPTV and wireline showed significant increased participation of 74 percent, up from 52.9 percent in 2016; and the participation rate for radio achieved 78.5 percent, it said.

Overall, the 2017 FCC defined the test was as a “success” and a demonstration that the EAS system has strengthened since the 2016 test, the report said. Signs of improvement include increased success of low-power FM stations in receiving and retransmitting alerts; a better understanding of EAS roles; a higher rate of configuring equipment to monitor IPAWS; higher retransmission rates with no complications; and fewer complications, the report said.

HONOLULU—Scott Humber, news director of Hawaii News Now—the combined news operation of Raycom Media’s KHNL and KGMB in Honolulu—was upstairs in his bedroom at 8:07 a.m. last Saturday (Jan. 13) when he heard the alarm on his phone go off downstairs.

Scott Humber

“My wife came upstairs immediately and she was crying,” says Humber. “I took a second to calm her down, looked down at my phone and saw the alert.”

“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

While his first reaction was disbelief because he didn’t hear civil defense sirens, Humber tuned his TV to his station and saw the EAS alert. What ensued for Humber and many broadcasters across the islands revealed not simply the vulnerability of the Emergency Alert System to human error upstream of their stations, but other threats to effective emergency communications to the public, such as the need for dependable two-way communications channels among critical station personnel as well as between stations and civil defense managers in the event of an emergency.

GET THE WORD OUT

Shortly after the warning went out, Humber received a call from one of his on-air talent saying that the alert was a false alarm. A neighbor who works for Hawaii Civil Defense ran to the talent’s house to say the alarm was in error.

A split second later, Humber’s assignment manager called to say the Honolulu Police Department, which got word the alarm was false three minutes after it was issued, was saying it wasn’t real, he says. With a second source confirming the error, Humber called his digital team and told them to get word out immediately on the station’s app that the alarm was false.

Humber’s luck with the phone ran out, however, when it came to alerting the station’s master control operators of the false alarm.

“Our first thought was we needed to get a crawl up on the air, but we couldn’t get through to our master control,” he says. Giving up on a voice call, Humber ultimately reached master control via text to instruct the MC operators to air an all-clear, which went on air by 8:30 a.m., he says.

At about that time, Humber made it into the station as did many of the station’s reporters and anchors who interrupted NCAA basketball on KGMB and a Premier League soccer game on KHNL with wall-to-wall coverage of the story for about four hours.

‘WORKED AS INTENDED’

If there is a silver lining to this false alarm event, it is that the EAS system’s over-the-air and IPAWS delivery succeeded in delivering the emergency alert as designed. “I would say the initial alert worked as intended,” says Chris Leonard, president of the Hawaii Association of Broadcasters and president and GM of New West Broadcasting, which operates five radio stations on the Big Island of Hawaii.

“It hit the air chain for our five radio stations. It hit the air chain for wireless devices for the wireless alert, and a crawl showed up on television stations as well.”

Participating EAS broadcasters don’t have a lot of flexibility in those first moments of a warning, he says.

“You have to take the alert at face value. It came through a verifiable source—in this case Hawaii Emergency Management—and our instruction to listeners was to proceed as advised. Shelter in place and heed the warning,” he says.

At 8:24 a.m., however, Leonard received a call from the mayor of Hilo at New West’s main studio that the message was a false alarm, which was followed one minute later by a recorded message from the emergency operating center to take to the air chain to announce the all-clear, he says.

By about 8:24 or 8:25 a.m., the broadcaster was on air alerting the public that the alarm was false. New West also pushed the all-clear to social media, he says.

‘A SHORT FUSE EVENT’

Where the system broke down was the failure of the state’s emergency management staff to use EAS to convey that the original warning was false until about 8:45 a.m., he says.

“I think the concern with that [using the EAS system to push the all-clear], although I don’t agree, is that typically we don’t receive an alert for something that is not happening. You don’t receive an alert that a flash flood warning is over,” says Leonard.

However, EAS does support issuing a message to inform the public of a false alarm by using an administrative code, he says. [The EAS system relies on predefined codes to trigger specific types of warnings, such as a hurricane or a tsunami.]

Courtney Harrington, chair of the state emergency communications committee in Hawaii, says that even if a specific EAS code to retract a warning does not exist, that is no excuse for not improvising by using the system’s other resources to inform broadcasters of a warning sent in error.

“If there is no code for withdraw, then send the message out under civil emergency,” he says. “There’s all kinds of codes that will trigger people. Who cares? Pick one. Implement. Thank you.”

Harrington, who is appointed by the FCC as the leader of the committee which oversees how Hawaii’s broadcasters use EAS, says a big part of the problem with the missile alert was that it was a “short fuse” event. In other words, from the time the alert was issued to expected impact of a missile is about 15 to 20 minutes versus the 72 hours that’s typical between the time a hurricane warning is issued and it arrives, he says.

With such a short fuse, there’s little time for the media and state emergency managers to communicate. Compounding the problem, are phone lines jammed with “everybody calling to see if their aunty is OK,” he says.

Regardless, the EAS system isn’t designed to be second guessed, he says. “One of the biggest questions I get from broadcasters is, ‘If this happens again, how do we confirm it?’ And my response is you can’t, and you shouldn’t,” says Harrington.

“This whole system, regardless of where you are in the country, is based upon trust. When an official on the government side activates the system, you must be confident there is a legitimate reason to do that.”

New West Broadcasting’s Leonard echoes that sentiment. “From a broadcaster’s perspective, when we receive an alert, it’s already been vetted and authenticated, and it’s not subject to our interpretation. We are required to forward that to our air chain and ultimately to our listeners,” says Leonard.

COLUMBUS, OHIO—Ohio Education Television Stations (OETS) is using the datacasting capacity of its ATSC 1.0 HDTV broadcasts to deliver emergency communications in Ohio during manmade and natural disasters. Meant to provide a redundant alternative to vulnerable internet-based communications during emergencies, the “OEAS (Ohio Digital Emergency Alerting System) Public AlertNet” uses a 128 kbps data allocation within the 12 OETS’ PBS stations’ HDTV broadcasts to transmit critical alerts and messages to other broadcasters for delivery to the public, with the future option of also serving police, fire and ambulance services with encrypted messaging.

Dave Carwile (L), OEAS Project Manager for OETS and WOSU Public Media and Tim Kelly, WOSU-TV Chief Engineer check out the receiver operation.

The OEAS Public AlertNet system was used on-air for the first time on Dec. 14, 2016, to deliver common alerting protocol (CAP) messages in English and Spanish during the state’s monthly EAS communications test exercise. The over-the-air transmission replaced the legacy EAS links that connect Ohio broadcasters to the state’s emergency management agency.

“The test went perfectly,” said OEAS Project Manager Dave Carwile of OETS and WOSU Public Media. “We proved that datacasting can be used to pass on local CAP, FEMA IPAWS (Integrated Public Alert & Warning System), and, in the future, NWS (National Weather Service) messages to other broadcasters and government agencies; all without needing the ‘last mile internet’ to carry the traffic. Given the issues with ‘last mile’ delivery during Hurricane Sandy and other major disasters, being able to deliver redundant communications via our secure television system is an extremely important alternative.”

THE NITTY GRITTY

OETS developed the OEAS Public AlertNet in partnership with the Ohio Emergency Management Agency (OhioEMA) and Ohio’s Broadcast Educational Media Committee (BEMC) with funding from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting.

The system is built on Monroe Electronics’ Digital Alert Systems platform and includes Monroe’s Emergency Operations Center (DASEOC) to originate, translate or relay CAP alerts, with a DASDEC-II unit serving as message aggregator. The content moves on to a Triveni Digital Skyscraper hub, then over secure fiber to the 12 digital transmitters operated by the eight OEAS member operations.

At the user end, an ATSC receiver delivers the signal to DASDEC LC (DASLC) emergency content servers, outfitted with IPAWS emulation software that makes the content available to legacy EAS machines.

Here’s how the OEAS Public AlertNet system works.

The process starts at the OhioEMA’s emergency operations center in Columbus, Ohio. This is where Ohio-related CAP and IPAWS messages are created or received for relay.

“All of these public warning messages are fed into the DASEOC, which authenticates and transfers them to the Aggregator for assembly into a single data stream,” said Ed Czarnecki, senior director of strategy and government affairs for Monroe Electronics. “The DASEOC unit can also process federal, statewide and county messages that need to be received by state first responders. All of these messages are assembled in a sequential manner, to simplify transmission and reception.”

Once this data stream has been encapsulated into a unique DTV transport stream by Triveni Digital’s SkyScraper data broadcasting equipment at the OhioEMA, the stream is delivered to the OETS master control rooms by BEMC over the state’s secure fiber optic network.

SkyScraper is a digital content distribution system that lets broadcasters decide how much bandwidth to allocate for data streams within their transmissions; insert those data streams into those signals; and include targeting information that ensures the data is only decoded by specific “addressable” receivers if desired. (This targeting is done back at the OhioEMA headquarters, using SkyScraper’s DataFab feature.)

When the data stream is received at each public broadcast location, it is multiplexed into the station’s digital broadcast signal. Ohio’s public stations provide virtually 100-percent coverage to all broadcast and cable facilities in Ohio, plus county public safety agencies.

A diagram of the ATSC 3.0 unified architecture. Since the current ATSC 1.0-based system can deliver any IP-based signal, it will be available for upgrade when ATSC 3.0 systems come online.

Click on the Image to Enlarge

At this point, the OEAS Public AlertNet messages go out over the air as a data stream in OETS’ HDTV transmissions. In this initial phase of the program, messages are going to receivers provided to all of Ohio’s legacy EAS LP radio stations and selected county EMA offices. However, they can be received by other TV and radio stations, first responder agencies and any other involved departments using digital TV data receivers that are integrated with Monroe Electronic’s DASLC emergency content management servers with IPAWS Emulation modules. Notably, beyond the IPAWS emulators provided by Monroe, all other DASDEC devices running v3.0 software can simply have a feature enabled to allow them to integrate with the OEAS system as well.

The DASLC translates the data stream, so that it can be polled by the reception site’s existing EAS equipment in the message’s native format. All 12 PTV stations transmit the same signal and the legacy EAS equipment continues to parse the content appropriate to their locations.

The result: “The emergency messages get through to everyone who need them; all without relying on the last mile internet,” said Czarnecki. “As new information comes into OhioEMA, the message assembly, encoding and distribution process repeats itself. This means that there is a constantly updated stream of emergency messages travelling from OhioEMA to the OEAS stations via HDTV broadcasts to everyone who needs this vital information in real time.”

APPLICABLE TO OTHER STATES

Ohio’s success in harnessing ATSC HDTV broadcasts to emergency messaging is a model that can be applied by broadcasters in other jurisdictions.

“There is no reason why broadcasters in other states, no matter how big or small, cannot do what we did and provide a redundant EAS communications system or encrypted messaging to first responders,” said Carwile. “ATSC’s datacasting capability is ideally suited for getting CAP, IPAWS, and other digital messaging to everyone who needs them without having to unilaterally rely on the last mile internet.”

Not surprisingly, OEAS is seeing a lot of interest in the OEAS Public AlertNet system from other states.

“In addition to talking to the emergency messaging people, we’ve had representatives of some of the commercial television groups in the state asking if they could purchase receiver packages so they could monitor the system directly and we will be making those available this year,” Dave Carwile said. He expects that “as we add more of the features we’re working toward—specifically weather, video and rich media for Amber Alerts—there will be more of a demand from the TV folks. The architecture is now in place, and since it can deliver any IP-based signal, it will be available for upgrade when ATSC 3.0 systems come online.”

For more information about the OEAS Public AlertNet system, contact Dave Carwile at carwile.1@osu.edu or call 614-292-9567.

INDIANAPOLIS—The Society of Broadcast Engineers has announced the formation of the SBE EAS Advisory Group which plans to keep abreast of developments regarding EAS that will affect SBE members, including changes in federal regulations, policy and technology, and communicate pertinent developments to appropriate SBE national leadership and staff.

Group members are include Larry Wilkins, CPBE, AMD, CBNT (group chair), George Molnar, James Hoge, Ed Czarnecki (Monroe Electronics/Digital Alert Systems), and Harold Price (Sage Alerting Systems).

The group members were chosen to yield insight from the two SBE national committees that are involved with EAS issues, SBE members who are heavily involved with EAS, and SBE sustaining members that manufacture EAS equipment. The group reports to Wayne Pecena, CPBE, 8-VSB, AMD, DRB, CBNE, the chair of the SBE Education Committee, and Joe Snelson, CPBE, 8-VSB, the chair of the SBE Government Relations Committee.

SBE has actively worked as a source of information for the Emergency Alert System since it was launched, according to the association. As the system has developed and evolved to include new technologies and alerting partners, so has the SBE adapted to be the most effective and thorough resource for broadcasters to use to implement their EAS efforts.

On the announcement of the group's formation, SBE President Jerry Massey said, "The SBE has worked with the various EAS partners, from stations to manufacturers to legislators, to be the trusted source of EAS information. The SBE EAS Advisory Group continues the effort that was begun by previous SBE committees."

Larry Wilkins, the group chair, added, "Going forward, one focus of the group will be to field reports concerning origination or distribution problems from broadcast stations and state emergency communications committees (SECC). Using the expertise of the committee members along with information from our contacts with the FCC and FEMA, a recommended solution can be issued to the industry."