[EAS] Another NPRM: Needless & Pointless Rule Making

[Alan Kline]

Yes, the secondary audio stream can and is used for both translated 
audio (generally Spanish) and descriptive video--just not at the same 
time. We've done it for several years, passing whatever we get from our 
network in those formats. Nothing originated locally.

I don't see it as "picking and choosing" between minority groups. I 
don't think there can be much debate over the fact that emergency 
information must take priority over a Spanish translation of a soap 
opera or football game, or the video description of an entertainment 
program.

That said, I agree with the position that this is Congress creating an 
issue where none exists. The problem with these rulemakings is that they 
assume that handicapped people are not only handicapped, they're stupid. 
For example, in a tornado situation, where the weather guy says, "Go to 
the basement", we're expected to crawl "Go to the basement" as either a 
CG crawl or closed-captioning. Granted, I've seen from experience that 
there are a lot of stupid people in the audience, but I would suggest 
that handicapped individuals are no different from anyone else living in 
a tornado (hurricane, earthquake, tsunami, locust-plague) area. When one 
lives in a certain area, one knows what the risks are and prepares in 
advance. If they don't, no amount of government hand-holding is going to 
help.

I also agree with the suggestion that this is likely to cause some 
stations to simply drop any non-EAS emergency crawls, and just tell 
viewers to go to the station's (non-regulated) website for that information.

I never agreed with the assertion during the election campaign that 
*all* regulations were bad and must be eliminated. But certainly, *some* 
regulations are unneeded. What's amazing is that here, we're not only 
*not* eliminating unneeded regs, we're adding more!

ak

On 11/29/2012 10:30 AM, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
> Yes, that's "descriptive video" and I thought the requirement was to be
> phased in according to market size over a period of years. Have we reached
> the end of the phase-in? The problem with using the secondary audio stream
> is that many stations use that channel for Spanish translations of their
> local news programming and in some cases, the stations have sponsors for
> that service. Can it be used for both? Spanish audio during local news
> programming and descriptive video during entertainment programming? Does the
> rule provide that kind of flexibility? Or are stations supposed to pick and
> choose between minority groups?