It was not a big surprise when word came in late November that John Lawson was stepping down as the executive director of the AWARN Alliance.

(The alliance’s steering committee selected Dave Arland for the role. An interview with Arland is available here.)

A year ago in an interview, Lawson compared his effort to help get ATSC 3.0-based advanced emergency alerting and information (AEI) off the ground as being like “pushing a rock up a hill” and described his decision to try a “for-profit” approach to get the ball rolling while also continuing in his AWARN leadership role.

Now John has given up the alliance’s reins, and he has a few thoughts about his greatest achievements and biggest disappointments while leading AWARN.

On the positive side of the ledger, the most significant thing was the role advanced emergency alerting played in getting the Federal Communications Commission to give ATSC 3.0 the thumbs-up in November 2017. “We were definitely a factor in the commission’s approval of the ATSC 3.0 voluntary transition. It was a three-to-two vote. Every commissioner—even the two Democrats [Mignon Clyburn and future Chair Jessica Rosenworcel] who voted against it—talked about the public-service aspect of advanced alerting. Chairman [Ajit] Pai himself thanked me for giving him the ammunition to get the votes.”

Another important achievement was educating emergency managers about the problems 3.0-based AEI solves for them and building support for it among members of that community.

His biggest disappointment: “That AEI is not deployed widely in the United States and saving lives already.”

Lawson’s biggest hope for AEI is renewed interest among broadcasters. A year ago, station groups like Fox Television Stations and News-Press & Gazette had left the alliance, and Lawson was characterizing the broadcast industry—with a few notable exceptions—as having “dropped the ball” on AEI.

“Since the election, I’ve seen a new commitment by some broadcasters to really do something with 3.0. We could see a sea change there,” he says, cautioning, however, that when it comes to AEI what must be avoided is for “every station group to have to reinvent the wheel.” That is the role he hopes his new America’s Emergency Network company will fill.

“I’m very happy that the AWARN steering committee, of which I am a member, decided unanimously to keep AWARN going, and I really think that its role in terms of education, advocacy and networking between alerting authorities and broadcasters is a necessary complement for whatever happens on the private sector side,” he says.

“I think we [the AWARN Alliance] kept the torch alive for using broadcasting to save lives. It’s still burning, and I am confident that Dave Arland and the AWARN steering committee will find new directions to expand AWARN.”

WASHINGTON—John Lawson, longtime broadcast alerting advocate and founder of the AWARN Alliance, said he is stepping down as its executive director to work full-time in his position as co-founder of America’s Emergency Network LLC, which uses satellite and the ATSC 3.0 core network to interconnect alerting authorities to NextGen TV stations. Dave Arland, founder and president of PR firm Arland Communications, has been tapped as the new executive director, taking over when Lawson steps down at the end of the year.

AWARN (Advanced Warning and Response Network)—a coalition of broadcasters, device manufacturers and emergency management agencies tasked with developing advanced emergency alerting technology for ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV)—was founded in 2015 with Lawson as its first executive director. Lawson is also president of his own consulting firm Convergence Services, a strategic consulting firm focused on spectrum, resilience and next-generation broadcasting business model.

Although Lawson has been a strong advocate for emergency alerting, he has recently expressed frustration and skepticism about the broadcast industry’s transition to ATSC 3.0, calling out broadcasters for not doing enough to advance the technology.

“By and large, the broadcasters have not lived up to the promises that many of them made to the FCC in 2017 to stand up advanced alerting if the commission approved a voluntary transition to ATSC 3.0,” he told TV Tech last year.

His frustration grew after meetings with the FCC and local broadcasters, Lawson told TV Tech recently. Last spring, in an op-ed published on TVNewsCheck, he advocated for a government program that would provide discounts for 3.0 converter boxes, similar to the converter box coupon program in the transition from analog to ATSC 1.0 several decades ago.

Then he met with the FCC.

“Senior staff at the FCC told me that the broadcast industry had made it clear from the beginning, in their opinion, that the 3.0 transition was unlike the transition from analog to digital, and that it would be a purely market-driven approach,” he said. “And then I went out on the road so to speak to the Michigan Broadcast Engineering Conference I really got a dose of reality,” adding that no one raised their hand when he asked attendees if the 3.0 transition was “on the right track.”

“I’m proud of the work of the AWARN Alliance to foster the use of ATSC 3.0 for advanced emergency messaging, which creates a powerful use case for NextGen TV,” Lawson said, thanking the AWARN Alliance’s core group of commercial and public broadcasters and technology companies that “grasp the life-saving power of NextGen TV alerting.”

Arland brings decades of industry experience and expertise in lobbying, communications and strategy to his new role at the AWARN Alliance. He continues to lead his consulting firm, Arland Communications, and serves as executive director of the Indiana Broadcasters Association.

“The AWARN Alliance itself is John Lawson’s legacy, and all of us owe him an enormous debt of gratitude,” AWARN Alliance Chairman John I. Taylor said. “Similarly, we are very fortunate to have the well-respected and talented Dave Arland to lead us into the future.”

Fifteen years ago this month, U.S. broadcasters “cut the cord” on NTSC, shutting down analog TV and putting the finishing touches on a transition to digital that lasted more than a decade. 

Viewer response was fairly muted, but that’s because broadcasters, regulators and consumer electronics companies rightly anticipated an outcry if too many viewers lost access to a free over-the-air signal. Navigating the deadline to shut down analog was a frustrating process as all parties involved attempted to assemble the variety of moving parts that made up the transition.

In the summer of 2024, the industry is looking at the next shutdown—the end of ATSC 1.0. Despite the arduous task that faced broadcasters in the 2000s during the first transition, this next transition could be even harder to achieve.

Comparing the two transitions is apples to oranges. The first transition was mainly based on regulatory guidelines that in essence, forced industries to cooperate toward a common goal. The cable, broadcast and consumer electronics industries were also facing a far less complex media ecosystem where there was less competition for eyeballs. And perhaps the biggest factor was the decrease in prices for large screen 16:9 flat screens that aligned with broadcasters’ move to HDTV, a very noticeable and welcome advance for home viewers.

What Do You Get With NextGen TV?
The transition to ATSC 3.0 (aka NextGen TV) is touted as “market-driven” with a lighter regulatory touch than the move to 1.0. There are no specific deadlines for stations to deploy the standard nor are there any mandates to provide tuners in any receiving devices. There aren’t any mandates for broadcasters to provide anything more than simulcasting ATSC 1.0. 

And, in contrast to the first transition, broadcasters face a much more complex media landscape and Silicon Valley competitors with far deeper pockets and much less to lose if a particular experimental service failed (remember Quibi?). It’s also harder to get viewers who are now used to getting their programs in 4K and HDR to get excited about 4K HDR broadcasts. 

Mark Aitken, senior vice president of advanced technology for Sinclair Broadcast Group would beg to differ on that front. 

“HDR is very significant, and one of the promises of the ATSC 3.0 standard is better television for America’s living rooms,” Aitken said at this year’s NAB Show. “It was the focus of the ATSC at this year’s CES. CBS’s delivery of the February Super Bowl LVIII in HDR should spur others to add this enhancement to their ATSC 3.0 transmissions and I expect to see announcements from other networks,” said Aitken, who added that some 40 Sinclair stations are on the air with Advanced HDR by Technicolor. 

Aitken’s sentiments are echoed by Anne Schelle, managing director of Pearl TV, the consortium of broadcasters and manufacturers promoting NextGen TV, who discussed how local Louisville, Ky. TV stations promoted HDR, 4K and Atmos immersive audio in their local 3.0 broadcasts during the week leading up to the 2024 Kentucky Derby. Local stations partnered with a local retailer to give away NextGen TV sets and promotions on their websites attracted “a significant increase in traffic.”

“I think that is a good indicator of the interest in HDR,” she said. Schelle also noted Pearl’s recent announcement that several large station groups, including Gray Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Hearst Television, Tegna and The E.W. Scripps Co. will accelerate funding of the ATSC 3.0 Framework Authority (A3FA), the driving force behind the RUN3TV platform. Pearl TV says it expects additional broadcast groups to become involved in the future.

“RUN3TV is  built by broadcasters for broadcasters and it allows companies who built on the platform to easily build applications and try out unique features and have them be able to work across the multitudes of operating systems that are currently out there and more to come,” she said.

A new partnership with ROXi to launch interactive music channels, as well as NBC’s announcement that affiliates in top markets are launching ancillary services via NextGen TV were among the other 3.0 highlights announced at the NAB Show in April. 

Beyond consumer applications, broadcasters are also using a portion of their spectrum to deploy new datacasting services. Also at the NAB Show, Sinclair launched its “Broadspan” datacast service in partnership with Edgio. The new service will enable data distribution in all the current markets where Sinclair stations are offering ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley invited other station groups to join the service. 

Bandwidth Constraints
While all of these new capabilities are brought to us via the ingenious capability of ATSC 3.0’s combination of broadcast with IP, there’s only so much bandwidth available and that bandwidth is further constrained by the 1.0 simulcasting requirement.

At presstime, ATSC 3.0 has been launched by more than 91 stations in 40 markets, bringing the advanced broadcast standard to within reach of more than 75% of U.S. households. Pearl TV says it expects that number to grow to more than 200 stations in 53 markets by the end of 2024.

Most of those stations are simulcasting 3.0 with 1.0 over “lighthouse” transmission partnerships in which one local station offers up its transmission facilities to “host” the other 3.0 stations in particular markets. This requirement is in place during the transition to ATSC 3.0. Originally, the FCC imposed a 2025 deadline to end 1.0 simulcasting but in 2023, moved the date to July 17, 2027. The decision was in part predicated by the industry’s exhortations to the commission earlier in the year about a “stalled” transition.  

In response, FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the formation of the “Future of TV” task force at the 2023 NAB Show, inviting all industry players to work together towards a successful conclusion of the transition to 3.0. 

“This Future of Television initiative will gather industry, government, and public interest stakeholders to establish a roadmap for a transition to ATSC 3.0 that serves the public interest” Rosenworcel said at the time. “A successful transition will provide for an orderly shift from ATSC 1.0 to ATSC 3.0 and will allow broadcasters to innovate while protecting consumers, especially those most vulnerable.”    

‘Frank’ and ‘Candid’
The FCC asked the NAB to take the lead by hosting the meetings, and while the industry has been tight-lipped about characterizing the tone, the best the press has been able to get out of sources is that they are “frank” and “candid,” which, in Inside the Beltway-speak, can have a wide variety of meanings. 

But given the cable industry’s long-held viewpoint that certain guardrails must be in place before it replaces 1.0 with 3.0 and the consumer electronics industry’s vehement opposition to any Congressional tuner mandates, it’s understandable that the task force may not arrive at a definitive deadline that will please everyone.

The NAB, for its part, is staying on message. “The Future of TV initiative has made great progress, and we are looking forward to releasing the report later this year,” they told TV Tech. “We appreciate the participation of everyone involved in this effort to help ensure a smooth transition.”

ATSC President Madeleine Noland agrees that ending the transition is top of mind for broadcasters, noting that until a deadline is established, broadcasters are finding ways to add more capabilities despite the bandwidth constraints. 

“As exciting as datacasting is, until the transition is farther along—and I don’t mean getting from 75% to 100%—but I mean within a given market, it’s important to have more transmitters available with 3.0. I think about the Boston market and we have one transmitter up, which is carrying five or six high-definition signals and at least two standard-definition search services. There’s not a lot of room to do anything else.”

Noland mentioned the recent addition of five more 3.0 stations in the San Antonio market as one of the ways around such constraints. “I gotta tip my hat to San Antonio for being able to get that second stick up.“ Noland said, adding that the current focus will not be in trying to finish the other 25%, but in expanding coverage in existing markets. “Let’s try to get depth in the markets that we already have because we’ve got all the big markets; let’s build it out and be able to do more with 3.0 in those markets.”

Consumer Devices
According to the CTA,  the cumulative U.S. installed base of NextGen TV receivers topped 10.3 million in 2023 and consumer sales of NextGen TV products are expected to increase by 45% in 2024. ATSC says more than 100 consumer products that support NextGen TV are expected to be available by the end of 2024, with the vast majority being TV sets from Sony, Hisense, TCL and Samsung. LG, which announced a suspension of the manufacturing of NextGen TV sets in 2023 due to a patent dispute, currently sits on the sidelines.   

Unlike the transition from analog to digital when the federal government subsidized the purchase of low-cost digital tuners for consumers who have yet to go digital, NextGen TV’s market-based approach provides no such incentives. 

One person, however, believes that a pure market driven approach is unrealistic and notes that public-private partnerships between industry and the government have an historic precedent that should also play a part in the transition to NextGen TV. 

John Lawson, executive director of AWARN, a consortium of business and government entities promoting advanced emergency alerting technologies on 3.0, thinks  low-cost converter boxes subsidized by the federal government would help accelerate the move to sunset 1.0. 

In an op-ed on TV Newscheck in March, Lawson wrote: 

“Congress would establish a new voucher program for 3.0 set-top boxes and dongles. This time, however, the subsidy program would be established in the name of public safety, for both resilient alerting in the face of climate change and national security to provide a back-up for GPS. Broadcasters would agree to carry Advanced Emergency Information, perhaps with sunset provisions for EAS, and receivers would be enabled to display AEI messages.”

Lawson said he arrived at his position after a meeting with the FCC as well as with broadcasters in Michigan.

“Senior staff at the FCC told me that the broadcast industry had made it clear from the beginning in their opinion that the 3.0 transition was unlike the transition from analog to digital, and that it would be a purely market driven approach,” he said. “And then I went out on the road so to speak to the Michigan Broadcast Engineering Conference I really got a dose of reality,” adding that nobody raised their hand when he asked attendees if the 3.0 transition was “on the right track.”

Lawson adds that his proposal follows a traditional path and promotes, “in effect, a partnership between government and industry.”

“American capitalism is dependent upon R&D and other investments by the federal government and it allows companies like Apple and Meta and many others to make a lot of money. [But] there's a general healthy weariness among the broadcast industry about getting government involved but there are many, many examples of where the two actually support each other.”

Will it Survive as a Purely Market-Driven Transition?
The transition to ATSC 3.0 contains an insane number of moving parts as well as a variety of approaches and while no one is suggesting Congressional mandates of any kind, in its current state, there remains some question as to whether it will survive its status as a completely market-based transition.  

But don’t tell that to Rob Folliard, senior vice president of government relations and distribution with Gray TV and chairman of Pearl TV who says the transition to 3.0 is moving at a faster pace than the move to 1.0. 

“[The transition] has worked better than the government-mandated transition 20 years ago, we are moving ahead faster,” Folliard said. “And I think the reason the market-based approaches work is because the broadcasters see a huge opportunity, a huge ROI, and we’re making it work. We’re finding creative ways to cooperate, channel share, in order to make the transition happen.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more information, visit our website. 

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

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

LEAWOOD, KAN.—When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, WWL – at the time a Belo station — managed to stay on the air due in large part to the efforts of Rick Barber, its director of technology and broadcast media when the storm struck.

But despite building a transmitter building on 14-foot concrete columns to get above sea level, installing a 1MW generator with a 1,500 gallon feed tank and installing an additional 10,000 gallon tank as a reserve, to stay on air Barber and a well-armed cadre of private security personnel hired by Belo had to transport fuel – a scarce and valuable commodity in the wake of the hurricane — to top off the generator’s tanks.

[Read: All 50 States, D.C., Opt In To FirstNet]

While Katrina is ancient history, Belo is no more and Barber has left the station, the problem of picking up the pieces after a major calamity, like a hurricane, earthquake or terrorist attack, to maintain vital, potentially lifesaving communications with the public remains.

However, with the signing of the 2018 Omnibus Spending Bill on March 23, things may be getting better for broadcasters who must grapple to stay on air in the aftermath of an emergency.

Tucked into the 2,232-page spending bill was the SANDy Act, which aims to protect the nation’s communications networks by giving radio and TV broadcasters, cable and satellite providers and wireline and mobile telephone service companies priority access to otherwise restricted areas in an emergency to make repairs and maintain service.

“Television and radio broadcasters have been trying to get priority access written into federal law since at least Hurricane Katrina, when stations were lifelines but diesel fuel deliveries to keep their generators running were blocked,” said John Lawson, executive director of the AWARN Alliance.

“The bill covers a range of communications infrastructure, but priority access for broadcast facilities may have the greatest positive impact for recovery,” said Lawson, who also serves on FEMA’s National Advisory Council Integrated Public Alert and Warning System Subcommittee.

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, authored the SANDy Act and led bipartisan negotiations aimed at its passage. New Jersey was among the states that suffered communications disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012.

In the Senate, the bill was backed by Senators Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

NAB issued a statement lauding the bill’s passage. “NAB is grateful that this bipartisan bill acknowledging the lifeline role of local broadcasting in times of emergency is now the law of the land,” said NAB EVP Communications Dennis Wharton in the statement.