[EAS] FCC Seeks Comment on Multilingual EAS

[Clay Freinwald]

Bill - 

I can understand the FCC's desire to address the needs of those whose
primary language is other than English (or American English)....and further
understand how, by percentage, Spanish is probably the second most widely
used.   

The National Weather Service has been trying to figure out how to deal with
this issue as well, however they don't have the channels they can use to add
additional languages to their NWR service.

I see this as, perhaps, a slippery slope.   What will the official response
be to those that complain that the Feds are playing favorites with
languages?   Even here in Washington State we have some 30-40 spoken
languages...What about them?  Which one will be the first to sue?

I asked one of my clients that operates a Latino formatted station if they
were going to run EAS messages in Spanish, their response was a quick - NO.
I find it interesting that they are now running a considerable number of
English language spots.   If advertisers feel they can reach Spanish
speakers with English language spots, could it be that running public
warning messages in English might be OK after all?

Just thinking - 

Us old folks have time for that :-)

Clay Freinwald

-----Original Message-----
From: eas-bounces at radiolists.net [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On
Behalf Of Bill Ruck

To round eyes it is "Chinese".

But there are multiple incompatible versions of "Chinese".  Plus all of the
other Asians that absolutely would not consider themselves "Chinese".

I vaguely remember once counting at least 8 different and incompatible
"Asian" languages used in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bill Ruck
San Francisco

At 03:04 PM 3/11/2014, you wrote:
>If we can't get English EAS right, how in the blazes does the FCC and 
>MMTC et al. expect us to handle two (or more) languages.  And more 
>over, in markets with "sizable populations" of 1st language speakers of 
>languages other than Spanish.
>
>Eg, Chicago has the largest Polish speaking citizenry outside of Warsaw 
>and Poland in general. Not to mention sizable populations of 1st 
>generation Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Unkrainan, and Farci speakers.

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