[EAS] Cable TV Problems

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 30 Nov 2011, David Ostmo wrote:
> 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  The EAS crawls were generic and occasionally outdated.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).

You identified issues with many different parts of the EAS, not limited
to just cable systems.

Did the local EAS community, including broadcasters, cable, satellite, 
wireline, emergency mangement agencies, have an post-event meeting or 
review any of those issues you identified and update the local EAS plan?

Outdated EAS alert information?  Its unlikely any cable system is 
originating the content of any EAS messages. More than likely it was 
re-transmitting EAS messages from another source.  Who was originating or 
delaying EAS messages with outdated information?  How can the quality and
speed of local EAS message origination be improved with the local 
emergency management community to reduce the outdated information?

How did local emergency officials coordinating with each other?  Should 
emergency officials originating EAS messages check if another group of 
emergency officials are having press conferences?

You mention news producing stations were covering the event. How many 
news producing stations are there compared to all broadcasters in the 
area?  What where non-news producing stations doing during the event?

The complaint of local emergency officials in the FCC comments, there is 
no requirement for even news producing stations to carry local emergency 
messages. It sounds like a dispute between industry rivals saying they 
don't want regulations, but that they should regulate their rivals 
instead.

How can local emergency management officials reach listeners or viewers
of non-news producing stations?  Are all the broadcast stations on
the cable system particpants in the same local EAS area or are some 
channels on the cable system from stations in other communities which may 
not carry the local emergency information?  While a few stations may
cover some local emergencies, what are the other broadcasters doing
during those events?

Should the local EAS plan's recommended event codes for re-transmitted by 
changed based on the review?  Does the EAS plan recommend too many or 
unnecessary event codes for automatic transmission?

Cable systems also get complaints because a local EAS message overrides 
CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, The Weather Channel which may also be covering the
same story. Why interrupt The Weather Channel report on severe weather for 
a EAS audio message about severe weather.  Since participation in state 
and local EAS plans is voluntary, and difficult to automatically 
determine which particular local or national station is covering 
what local emergencies, should cable systems just opt-out of local EAS 
plans completely because local news producing stations maybe or maybe
not will cover the events?

Why haven't broadcasters and cable systems included the requirement when 
they negotiate retransmission agreements?  Nothing in the FCC rules 
prevent cable systems and broadcasters from reaching an mutual agreement
between themselves.  If its not included in the retransmission agreement, 
its because the parties didn't feel it was important enough to make it a
make or break issue.  Why should the FCC make a regulation that the
industry participants didn't feel important enough to include in their 
negotations between each other?

It takes a lot of cooperation between a lot of parties to make EAS a
success.  Likewise, blaming a single participant probably misses other
things that need to be done.