[EAS] $55K fine for misuse of EAS tones

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 31 May 2017, Phil Johnson wrote:
> Leave out the journalism students, please.  News reporters are nearly
> extinct at small stations, and those who work for larger operations don't
> often have a hand in commercials.
>
> "Apparently they don't teach journalism/broadcast students about EAS and the
> misuse of EAS tones."

The good news is the FCC hasn't fined a news reporter or newscast for 
including EAS tones in a news story, even when it caused some problems. 
The FCC fines DJs, advertisments and entertainment broadcasts for "pranks" 
and misuse of EAS/EBS tones.

However, the FCC doesn't license advertising agencies, production houses 
or sports teams.  TEGNA didn't produce the promo spot. They failed to 
review the spot before air. The reality, many local sales teams don't 
carefully review every spot from well-known clients before airing it.

Ideally, the digital media ingest software could scan advertising spots 
for EAS-like tones. But that just leads to the ad creators trying to 
figure out how close an EAS simulation can be.