[EAS] Use of government communication facilities for PEP

[Sean Donelan]

On Sat, 9 Jul 2016, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> Someone please explain technical and non-political reasoning for not using
> the NWR as a PEP. With FEMA spending millions to harden many Class A AM's
> and any number of  wide coverage FM's, would it not make sense to harden
> the NWR system as well?
>
> Some of these political silo's need to have holes drilled into them...

Money and lobbying. Each time it was considered, it usually came down 
to

1. It would cost a lot of money, although technology is making it cheaper
2. Industry objected strongly to the government "competing" with private 
industry
3. Inter-agency turf battles

In the early 1960's, when the Emergency Broadcast System was being
created, there were several studies and proposals to build and use 
government communication facilities for emergency *public* broadcasting.
Those proposals were clearly rejected by Congress and the White House. 
Instead the 1960's policy was emergency broadcasts to the public would be 
through "...the entire nongovernment communications industry on a 
voluntary basis..."

In the 1970's, Congress approved funding for expanding "local" weather 
radio stations, but would not approve funding to create a national weather 
radio network. There was still concern in Congress about creating any type 
of national government broadcast network. There are very strict rules 
about what can be broadcast on weather radio stations.

After 9/11, Congress approved additional funds for hardening nongovernment 
broadcast facilities, but there still seems to be concern about spending 
money on government agencies broadcasting to the public. The official 
policy still seems to be government agencies must reach the public 
through "...the entire nongovernment communications industry on a 
voluntary basis..." even during an emergency.

Federal government agencies can't just do things without authorization 
and funding from Congress and the White House.