[EAS] New EAS Forum posting on Intermediary Devices

[Sean Donelan]

On Mon, 23 Jan 2012, Marlin Jackson wrote:
> Clay can chime in too and "snow-challenged" may be an understatement. 
> As a broadcaster in Eastern Washington the CAP system has several 
> advantages including TTS. There are 19 counties in Washington that an 
> activate a statewide or local alert. Many are isolated counties. Each 
> and every county can securely access the MyStateUSA web site, type in 
> the  alert and hit send. Our audio is always clean and the correct level. 
> Most counties wouldn't be able to do that otherwise.

Los Angeles commemorated SigAlert's 57th anniversary on Monday.
There have always been other systems that distributed emergency 
information without getting stuck in the rules for EAS/EBS.

The debate isn't about TTS.  But whether its better to do the
text to speech generation at the originator or generate it at
diverse text to speech systems at the receiver.

CAP origination software may do many different things, including
a text to speech generator.  A CAP website could add a "preview" button 
next to the "send" button, which could use TTS to generate an audio file 
that emergency managers could listen to and include the URL in the CAP 
alert.  What's the difference between generating the TTS audio file at the 
orgination point or at each CAP receiver?  Doing it at the origination 
point could let the emergency manager alter the text to improve the speech 
generation. The digital audio file would still be clean, and CAP 
generation software could make sure the original digital audio file has 
consistent levels.

Destination-based TTS doesn't exercise the system with "live" messages 
such as national Presidential messages.  Part of the original reason for 
using the EAS/EBS for non-national messages is it helps shake out 
day-to-day problems, on the theory then the system will be more likely to 
work when needed in a catastrophe.  The less similar the day-to-day 
operation is with the rare catastrophe operation, some of the day-to-day 
issues may not get fixed before its needed.

Origination-based TTS could be more similar to "live" messages 
end-to-end.  Although its not identical either.

I have no inside information about why the FCC made its decision or 
comments in its ruling.

> As for the question "why would LP-1 stations continue to voluntarily 
> translate CAP to EAS/SAME formatted messages". In the Washington State 
> plan the entire legacy system will remain in place as a backup system. 
> Our LP-1 AM is monitored by 26 stations and our FM by 74 stations. We 
> would want listeners of all 7 of our stations to hear the alerts anyway.

If the LP stations are expected to provide the CAP to EAS/SAME 
translation forever, what goal is achieved by also requiring the 26+74 
stations to buy CAP-enabled boxes?  If they think CAP provide them
some benefit, those stations would buy CAP boxes without a FCC mandate.
If CAP doesn't provide them with a benefit, why can't they continue to
use plain old EAS boxes forever?