[EAS] ETRS doing SECC's a favor

[Sean Donelan]

On Mon, 22 Aug 2016, Clay Freinwald wrote:
> I feel your pain... albeit on a smaller scale.  I have spent a lot of time
> this month answering queries from EAS Participants trying to figure out
> ETRS.  And yes, broadcasters that only this month decided they should figure
> out what their monitoring assignments are!  Some are those small stations
> that sprung up without the SECC/LECC knowledge and there fore weren't listed
> in the monitoring assignments.  Others simply didn't have a copy of the
> plans for various reasons.

There are over 27,000 EAS participants.  I don't know how many are in 
Washington State.  If its like other things, a majority of EAS 
participants are in compliance, monitoring the correct EAS sources, and 
figured out the ETRS on their own.  But if even 20% of participants have 
questions, that's thousands of questions.  When you are the person 
answering the phone, that's a lot of questions.

I haven't heard any complaints about defunct/nonfunctioning SECCs in
any State/territory this month, so maybe the FCC has resolved that 
problem. It will be interesting to see what percentage of EAS 
participants appear in the final ETRS facility coverage numbers.

My prediction is 70%-80% file on time, and the FCC will mail out 
"courtesy reminder" notices to the rest.

One thing I don't understand is why the FCC is telling participants to 
request monitoring waivers from the FCC instead of going first to the 
SECC/LECC. In most cases, the SECC/LECC is able to correct the monitoring 
assignments or make a new assignment for an EAS participant. I had assumed 
he FCC only needs to handle the few cases when there are no feasible 
alternative monitoring sources.