[EAS] MIA's

[Dave Turnmire]

On 11/15/2017 7:47 AM, Ed Czarnecki wrote:
> - 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.
IMHO, the EAS community (SECC chairs, broadcast associations, etc) fell 
down on the job a bit on this.  The FCC gave us lots of advance notice, 
yet it wasn't until the last minute that we started thinking about how 
we would act on the requirement.  Yeah, a lot of us think it was a silly 
bureaucratic exercise that didn't accomplish much. But that didn't 
change the reality we were going to have to act on it in some fashion... 
either deliberately chose to ignore it ... or figure out how to comply.

> - Some industry press picked this item up a bit late, or not at all.
Yeah, I must admit to being a bit surprised about how little press 
coverage there was.  Shame on them.
>
> 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.
The time to figure out how to communicate with our constituents isn't a 
couple weeks before a legal deadline.  As has been discussed in earlier 
posts by many, in order to be effective, SECCs (and LECCs) need to have 
established and ongoing communications with their constituents 
(including cable companies).  For items such as this reporting 
requirement, working with the state broadcasters association is helpful, 
but how often do those associations have contact info for non-members?

I tend to think of the state broadcaster associations as partners... but 
ones that deal principally with management and members.  On the other 
hand, most of MY contacts tend to be engineers and isn't restricted to 
broadcasters or members of some organization.  A little duplication of 
messaging doesn't hurt anything.

In this day and age, there are lots of ways to communicate.  In our 
state that tends to be principally by email distribution lists (managed 
at LECC level) and by Google Groups or the equivalent. Websites and 
Facebook can be used to help stations who are looking for us to find 
us.  The FCC website helps... but the SECCs need to make sure that info 
is up to date.  Which is a bit harder than it should be... took me a 
year to get it updated when I took over as chair.  Silly me... I thought 
sending an email to their webmaster would be appropriate.  Ended up that 
an email to the policy division is what got it updated.

Obviously there is only so much SECCs can practically do.  Licensees are 
constantly changing owners and staff, and contact info is constantly 
becoming out dated.  The individual licensees need to make some effort 
to reach out.  Failing to do so can be costly.  But at least in my 
world, engineers tend to talk to each other so if we are reasonably 
diligent about having email lists and/or Google Groups (or 
equivalent)... and don't wait until the last minute... important info 
should get out there.  Whether the horse drinks the water or not... is 
on him.

One thing I learned from this experience... I need to familiarize myself 
with how to use SurveyMonkey to create surveys.  I have taken a number 
of those surveys, but never created one.  Since we have a small state 
(in population), I had already committed to just having people email me 
when I started hearing here about SECCs using SurveyMonkey.  Seems like 
a good idea.  I'd be curious to know what portion of your respondents 
actually used it... rather than email/snail mail.  And whether it is as 
easy to analyze the results as I'm guessing it is.  If the FCC ever 
pulls this stunt again... maybe we should get on the ball sooner 
planning a response... and consider collaborating on designing a survey 
that is in large part identical between states to ease consolidating and 
comparing results.

Dave