[EAS] Cable Association Requests EAS Test Delay

[Ed Czarnecki]

Building on what Steve J just posted, the TV Technology article errs by
oversimplification.  For instance, it asserts that "The absence of CAP in
the nationwide Nov. 9 test caused concern for the cable industry because
many systems won’t be able to run a text crawl identifying the alert as a
test."

Well, first of all, the text crawl can't identify the alert as a test for
either broadcast TV or cable.  Not without modification.

Secondly, as Steve noted, the challenge for the majority of cable TV systems
was the FCCs request to modify the slate display (since they cannot do
crawls) to indicate the EAN was only a test.  The display is currently what
Part 11 requires.  Putting a background graphic or modifying the state goes
beyond Part 11, and beyond the specifications by which many systems were
designed.

Finally, abbreviating the test to 30 seconds does not address any of these
underlying concerns.  Whether 3 seconds, 30 seconds or 3 minutes,
crawl/slate output will still be the same.  It just minimizes the exposure
time of the text output.

I also had to chuckle at the phrase "to reduce the chance of an unintended
reenactment of “War of the Worlds.” "  I guess as opposed to an *intended*
reenactment of the War of the Worlds?

Ed

Edward Czarnecki, Ph.D. 
Senior Director – Strategy, Development & Regulatory Affairs  |  Monroe
Electronics Inc.  |  Digital Alert Systems
email ed.czarnecki at monroe-electronics.com | www.monroe-electronics.com
| www.digitalalertsystems.com 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Steven C Johnson

Gary,

Thanks for getting the story right -- 

Cable_Association_Requests_EAS_Test_Delay

TV Technology did not; implying that cable was requesting a delay due to not
being able to comply, which is not the case.

The cable industry, working with its vendors,  has the ability to comply
with the Part 11 rules.  The difficulty was in complying with the FCC's
request to do a custom slate saying the EAN was only a test.  

The delay was requested to give time to support this request in order to
eliminate confusion or panic for any viewers only having access to the video
message and not the audio message too.

-- 
Steven C Johnson
Johnson Telecom, LLC
www.JohnsonTelecom.com
Steve at JohnsonTelecom.com
704 968 7031
AIM  SteveJNC
 
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>------------------------------

>Message: 8
>From: "Gary Timm" <gteas at sbcglobal.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain;       charset="iso-8859-1"

>For those who haven't seen or had time to read it, please see my article on
AWARE for a link to the official FCC Public Notice on the 30-second test
script, as well as an excerpt directly in my post stating why the change was
made:  http://www.awareforum.org/category/eas/

>Gary Timm
>WI SECC

>------------------------------

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