[EAS] Best and Worst of New CAP EAS Rules

[Mike McCarthy]

You know....with all the teeth gnashing about the text to voice 
conversion prohibition, let me add one possible thought.

The FCC went out of it's way to specifically void the use of the 
conversion at present. There is something else in the works which I 
envision will cause them to revisit and reverse their stated stance in 
the 5th R&O. FEMA and others within the feds want the voice conversion 
for ADA compliance. The FCC is now at odds with them and the Act. There 
is something more to this than what is readily apparent.

I suspect they wanted to stop a potentially run-away train from leaving 
the station before all the passengers were on board...if I might use 
that euphemism.  Or to stop the bell from being run before a crack is 
fully repaired.  We all know how hard it is to un-ring a bell.  hmmmm...

MM

On 1/18/2012 4:01 PM, Tom Taggart wrote:
> Thanks, Harold, for confirming my worst fear.  There is
> nothing more useless than just airing header and EOM--as I
> mentioned earlier, NWS Pittsburgh used to do that. They
> monitored TV cable--saw a crawl, and assumed everything was
> working OK.  Even though the NWS relay station I monitored
> wasn't sending any alert audio.
>
> A suggestion from the State of Washington that they are
> going to use text-to-speech whether the Commission approves
> or not may get the FCC's attention.
>
> The Report and Order appears to have been written by the
> legal staff with only a limited grasp of how any of these
> devices are going to work in the real world. Given the
> timing--probably 45 days before the R&  O appears in the
> Federal Register, may be something to bring up publicly at
> the April NAB show. Bureaucrats don't like any signs of
> dissent.  Either they will quickly reconsider, or get their
> backs up.  If they throw up the barricades, at that point we
> will know this is all a bad joke, like some of their other
> stupid rules. Case in point: the "No advertising
> discrimination" statement which everyone gets to swear to in
> this renewal cycle, a rule that is impossible to comply
> with.
>
> RDS: While you could use RDS as a supplement to the alert
> audio, many car radios chop up the display to the point of
> being unreadable. There is a company that sells a
> semi-closed circuit alerting system using the "second page"
> of RDS (available on a number of European car radios, but
> not commonly found here). They sell radios with a larger
> display just for this purpose. Local college installed such
> a system after the Virginia Tech incident from several years
> ago.
>
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