[EAS] FCC Seeks Comment on Multilingual EAS

[Barry Mishkind]

At 07:36 AM 3/12/2014, Alex Hartman wrote:
>We have been doing EAS and local emergency translations for spanish and somali here for about a year. 

        And *this* is the answer to the issue:
        stations should serve their audience.

        Something I wrote a few years ago 
        when this issue first came up:
        one simple policy can solve it all.

        Since EAS is voluntary ... as to what
        alerts are carried, every station featuring 
        foreign language programming should
        voluyntarily have someone "on duty" monitoring 
        the EAS 24/7. When an alert comes in they 
        can easily get on the air, via IP, cellphone, 
        VoIP, VPN, etc. 

        The person doesn't have to be in the station,
        they can be anywhere. But if an
        appropriate EAS message comes, they
        should connect, translate, inform.

        Of course, the FCC could mandate carriage
        of more alert codes, but this will inevitably
        lead to "advocate" lawyers demanding
        mandatory EAS messages in a plethora
        of languages. And, once that happens, it
        will be a huge free-for-all in the courts,
        and broadcasters will be left holding the
        paperwork and compliance bag...  

        One could note that this country is somewhat
        unique in the number of domestic broadcast
        facilities devoted to languages other than the
        official language of the land. Perhaps they owe
        something to the community they claim to serve.