[EAS] About this multilingual order...

[tpt at sevenrangesradio.com]

In an era where EVERYTHING becomes politicized I share many of Rod's concerns.  If we just left it to the FCC to insure every station had a working decoder, that would be fine.  But then I saw--a number of years ago--where a Wyoming station received a violation notice for monitoring a station not assigned by the state plan.  Barry will remember the incident a few years ago where the FCC was after an FM relay because their monitored station kept screwing up the monthly test. Thereby locking up the local cable system that monitored that relay station.

This whole multilingual issue has nothing to do with EAS.  As Clay has noted, EAS is merely the doorbell.  What MMTC's gripe really boils down to is the desire for a second source of emergency information in large scale disasters like we've seen in the past months. What might keep them happy is an American version of the bilingual CBC--except Spanish as the second language.  With, of course, local staff in each major urban center.

Assuming this information we are sending to the SECC actually gets to Washington (knowing the WV operation I have my doubts)--look for MMTC or some other activist group waving around a stack of reports and shouting "Look, 98% of the radio stations in this country only broadcast alerts in English.  We must do something about this!"

Which may generate more reporting demands, more mandates, more impractical nonsense while the special interest groups beat up on broadcasters.  Get a clue, folks--about 2,000 radio stations are owned by giant groups more concerned with keeping bondholders at bay (and with lots of Washington DC  legal staff on retained); while small owners like myself are more concerned with meeting payroll. I'll do live emergency broadcasts when events demand--but if the government wants an all hazards, all language alerting system, let them build their own system.

Start demanding multilingual alerts, rainbow alerts (amber, blue, purple and fuschia) etc etc--without requiring that I carry them--and I'll just tell the box to log everything except RMT's and the occasional NPT nuisance.