[EAS] MIA's

[Ed Czarnecki]

FWIW - we handled many inquiries about the multilingual reporting
requirement (On the Monday before the deadline, I fielded 60+ inquiries that
one day alone).  Many of these were small cable operators (so cudos to both
the American Cable Association, whom we were happy to support getting info
out to small cable, and NCTA which worked with larger cable operators).  We
provided updated SECC contacts and the actual text of the FCC's order to
those who needed it.

And, yes, there was apparently great confusion among both broadcast and
cable operators - many of those calling thought there was an actual
implementation deadline for multilingual support.  Others wanted to get into
great technical detail on how our systems process multiple languages, even
though they are not themselves using anything other than English.

In general, there seems to have been several communications issues with this
exercise.  Unfortunately, these are recurring themes when communicating EAS
matters:

1. The FCC issued the order in 2016, but as we all know many small operators
don't exactly monitor the FCC very closely.
2. The order was misread or misunderstood by some EAS Participants and by
some of their counsel, the latter of which I find hard to excuse).
3. Secondary outreach may have been lacking in some respects.  Specifically:
- Many state broadcast associations issued advisories about this filing, but
not all broadcasters were on those distribution lists - and cable typically
was not contacted by broadcast associations of course.
- Each state had a different set of questions or reporting methods.  This
became a bit of an issue for larger groups with operations in multiple
states.
- Some industry press picked this item up a bit late, or not at all.

A good postmortem here would be finding out why some EAS Participants did
not get the info at all, despite attempted direct outreach by state
associations and SECCs.

From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of Clay Freinwald

Dave - 

I suspect the problem here is that a lot of these outfits don't want anyone
communicating with the FCC unless it's their legal department (or hired
gun).     Agreed, Cable was a bit more responsive than expected.   

A lot of broadcasters view EAS as a necessary evil and not much more.   Many
of them refused to participate beyond what the FCC requires.   Not sure the
FCC will bother to follow up on who responded to this and who did not.

Will be interesting to see if the Commission provides some guidance
regarding the format for the SECC reporting to them of our findings.  (Don’t
want to get my hopes up) 

Clay

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS [mailto:eas-bounces at radiolists.net] On Behalf Of David Turnmire

I also got a pretty good response from Cable Companies.  Even heard from
DirecTV.  The response rate was lower from broadcasters.  I did get a letter
from iHeart on behalf of all of their stations (and a note that it
superseded any reports from individual stations) with a list of all of their
stations.