[EAS] EAN Natioanl Always ?

[Harold Price]

Don,

Do you mean sending the alert as content down the normal network feed 
that might be the program source at the time?  If things are running 
well, the EAN would come down the national feed, but would still be 
finding its way down the pep/state/lp chain.  At the local affiliate, 
you'd get the start of the alert on the national feed (if it got it 
first), then your local device would start it up - causing 
confusing/partial messages to the public.  The FCC rules require you 
to insert the EAN directly - carrying a network feed that has it 
isn't the intent.  In the other case, you got it locally first, 
switching up to the network feed replacing the local EAN in progress 
isn't permitted by the rules.

If the communications infrastructure is running at the time, the EAN 
would hopefully be a short wakeup call for everyone to tune to a news 
source.  If you ARE a news source, you'd want the EAN off the air as 
soon as possible so you could carry normal high quality audio and 
live video, not just a crawl.  On a really bad day, the kind of day 
EAS is intended for, the national source might not be available to you anyway.

I think feeding the alert down the regular network feed would be a 
bad idea.  Feeding it on a side channel for distribution purposes, 
like NPR is doing, is a good idea, but not on something that might go 
to air directly.

Harold

At 11:53 AM 9/22/2011, Don  Heppelmann wrote:
>Thanks.
>
>This question was raised to see if it was appropriate for major TV 
>networks to monitor for and then also feed the EAN alert, including 
>the header and EOM, directly to their affiliates with good video and 
>audio. Of course this is in addition to the PEP audio only source. 
>An operator, if available, could then switch up to the network feed.
>
>Don