[EAS] New EAS NPRM now posted on the EAS Forum Website

[Tim Stoffel]

When EAS originally came out, I worked at an AM-FM-TV station. Because the three operations were quite separate and diverse, the Chief Engineer and I came up with a system that used three of the original Endecs. These three Endecs shared monitoring receivers. The system was simple and should have been reliable and flexible. But the VP of engineering overruled us. He ordered us to install the absolutely, positively cheapest EAS system we possibly could, even if it was unwieldly and user-hostile to operate, and even if it just saves us 1 cent. And this is exactly what we got. The result was the three stations had to do a lot of coordination among themselves to run a test or an alert. This station was famous for this kind of foolish penny pinching. I remember shortly after I started, a person spending an entire day to find the lowest price per connector on 25 XLR connectors. Or measuring a long cable run three times to ensure he didn't have to buy one foot more cable than he absolutely needed. It is interesting though-- when this VP of engineering was retiring, he gave me as kind of a 'going away gift', a budget of $30,000 to purchase a new remote pickup microwave system, something we desperately needed at the time.

Tim Stoffel, KNPB

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Not two issues....but one.  If it doesn't produce revenue or cut costs, they're not interested in talking about it let along doing something meaningful. To most managers and owners, EAS is a cost center with no possible recoupment. Complex or simple, that's the bottom line.