[EAS] Cable TV Problems

[David Ostmo]

Case in point: In 2002 there was major flooding in San Antonio.  The news producing stations were covering the event with wall to wall coverage, including live press conferences from the Emergency Operations Center.  The cable generated EAS crawls stepped all over the real time news coverage.  The EAS crawls were generic and occasionally outdated.  The television broadcast news coverage was real time and detailed. 

Cable viewers watching the local channels were unable to hear some of the time critical information the television stations were attempting to disseminate. 

Even the viewers who were watching cable channels, such as Discovery, and switched to the local news channel to get more informations when they noticed an EAS crawl.  When they tuned to their local stations they found the exact same crawl over the news coverage.  How do I know this?  I personally talked with numerous viewers call our station during that flooding event.  We received our own flood, it was a wall of calls fromfrustrated viewers who thought the television broadcasters were stepping all over themselves. 

Bottom line: the public is not being served when EAS activations step all over the local channels.  EAS channel exclusion works in everyone's best interest, (the local broadcasters, the cable operators, and the viewers).

David Ostmo
San Antonio, Texas

>Should broadcasters be required to carry all local emergency messages in
>exchange for cable systems excluding those channels from local franchise
>override requirements?

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