[EAS] FCC Seeks Comment on Multilingual EAS

[Rod Zeigler]

What bothers me personally about this very large can of worms is mission 
creep.
In our town Spanish is probably equal in use to English, BUT (big but) 
we also have Sudanese, Arabic, and Chinese populations as well.
So, do we double, triple, or more the number of alerts?
Do we increase the time of single alerts to compensate for the number of 
languages the alert is going to be repeated in?
How do we determine which languages we need to broadcast the alert in?
At what population percentage do we determine that there is insufficient 
population to require alerts?
Do we require alerts for EVERY spoken language in a geographic area?
What do we do about alerting transient populations? We have a number of 
truck drivers on I-80 speaking Russian.
EAS is a doorbell, not a Swiss army knife to add and subtract pieces as 
instant needs require.
My opinion is if your format is a foreign language, re-translate the 
alerts you receive into the language you broadcast.
This seems to be part of that "serving the public interest, convenience, 
and necessity" that we all are required to do when we receive a 
broadcast license.

Rod Zeigler

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
KRVN-KTIC-KNEB
Newsletter: http://tinyurl.com/RRNnews