Members of the FCC's Media Security and Reliability Council have approved nearly 50 best practices recommendations to ensure radio, TV and cable stations remain on the air or recover quickly in times of a national emergency.
The group was chartered after 9/11 and patterned after a similar advisory group for the wired and wireless telephone industries.
Key recommendations include:
* Media companies should take appropriate measures to provide backup power capabilities for their key facilities;
* Media companies with local news origination should ensure that they have robust and redundant ways to communicate with external news services and remote news teams;
* All local media in a market should collaborate to increase their collective geographic diversity and to establish redundant interconnections capable of supporting emergency operations.
The recommendations were presented to members of the MSRC at its biannual meeting Nov. 6. The members recently completed voting on these recommendations.
