WASHINGTON—Representatives of the AWARN Alliance recently met with Federal Communications Commission officials to stress the fact that NextGen TV devices are designed to receive Emergency Alerts and to rebut findings of a study by Weigel Broadcasting that claimed to have found problems with the ability of ATSC 3.0 devices to receive crucial emergency alerts.
The July 13 meeting, which was summarized in a July 15 letter to the FCC, involved Dave Arland and Kathryn Barnhart of the AWARN Alliance, Media Media Bureau staff (Hillary DeNigro, Lyle Elder, Mark Colombo, Maria Mullarkey, and Evan Baranoff), Allison Howell and Patrick Harty (legal advisor and staff for Commissioner Brendan Carr) and Marcus Maher (legal advisor for Commissioner Olivia Trusty.)
During the meeting the AWARN representatives stressed that their “mission is to save lives and protect communities by leveraging advanced emergency alerting, news, and information powered by the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard” and that they were meeting with the FCC “to clear up a misrepresentation made about the ability of ATSC 3.0 receivers to properly receive and display Emergency Alert System (EAS) messaging.”
AWARN also stressed that “the voluntary Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) capability of the ATSC 3.0 standard is a useful and effective supplement to the EAS already in place, which reaches millions of viewers with broadcast signals. As the AWARN Alliance has previously stated, we reiterated that local stations are the best option for keeping local audiences informed during specific emergencies, including providing geolocation targeted information, maps, multilingual and sign language services, and other capabilities that are anticipated in the ATSC 3.0 standard.”
In addition, AWARN argued that “more than 18.5 million NextGen TV sets and converter boxes can receive EAS Alerts…[C]ontrary to the impression delivered by Weigel Broadcasting during their recent meeting and subsequent ex parte filing , virtually every ATSC 3.0 receiver can easily tune to ATSC 3.0 broadcasts with an antenna and without an internet connection.”
They also rebutted Weigel’s contention that “an internet connection is a requirement for ATSC 3.0 reception…this is not a factual statement. We noted that EAS signaling is present in the actual linear broadcast, and that supplemental data can be delivered through optional AEI capabilities of the standard, which could rely on both broadcast and internet-delivered information. But if a viewer is simply watching a linear program, we stated that viewer will get EAS alerts.”
AWARN also complained that “receivers `tested’ by Weigel were “cherry-picked” to emphasize their point” and that they focused on just two products.
Although AWARN did not mention this, one of those products, HDHomeRun has since upgraded its boxes so they can receive alerts without an internet connection.
“Unmentioned in the selected Weigel reception results is the fact that internet service is not required for ATSC 3.0 reception with the least expensive NextGen TV receivers now available to consumers, including set-top receivers manufactured by ADTH and Zinwell…Further, we pointed out that the submitted analysis only considered advanced “gateway” set-top devices with retail prices that exceed $200, designed for consumers who have broadband connections and who also desire advanced program guides and multi-room viewing capability.”
AWARN also noted that the Zapperbox device that Weigel “tested” is the only device on the market that requires an internet connection to decrypt content, and a Zapperbox software update to change this behavior is already in the works.”
The full discussion is available here.
