[EAS] FCC NPRM on improving EAS just issued

[Don Heppelmann]

Hi Mike,

I'm not aware of any false EAN alerts here in Minnesota. (knocking on wood now) We have our system in Auto-Forward for an EAN, and have been this way for many years. 

Sorry to hear about your issues, and I understand the pain you and your stations experienced, but show me any system, especially an automatic one, that doesn't offer technical and operational issues. That's the growing pain, and I sure hope your pain and experience has changed system features and operational workflow to mitigate future false alerts. 

We must learn and fix issues from these instances. But at some point, the system needs to be trusted and fully deployed. Do you believe that point will ever be reached? To me that is the issue. If you and other stations are still 'gun shy' over this, then still more work is needed to fix it. I believe the current NPRM addresses at least one of the issues.

I also believe broadcasters are the final delivery to the public. Broadcasters should never be the distribution infrastructure to other broadcasters/participants. There should be multiple secure input ports and distribution paths for origination sources for alerting both local and national. I total get it, it costs money, but if our friends in Canada can get it done, why can we? 

Don

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

With all due respect Don, have you lived through not one, but several false EAN's either with no EAT's or extended takeover where you needed to physically power down or bypass the EAS box to get your station(s) back?
My stations have.

While the most recent event didn't impact any of my stations, the most recent was the station which played a year old EAN and took over a good part of a region extending into several adjoining states. That event showed a significant flaw in the EAN verification and the manner in which the Julian date scheme is and is not employed in EAS.

When a false message of significance goes out automatically on your station(s), get back with me on your thoughts concerning positive message verification measures....

Cheers....

MM

On Wed, February 3, 2016 8:35 am, Don  Heppelmann wrote:
> Broadcasters need to be a bit more accepting and configure their box 
> to "auto-forward". It's time for broadcasters to quite focusing on 
> what is inappropriate, and let the system automatically pass along the 
> emergency public information post haste.
>
> Don Heppelmann

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