[EAS] Need new excuses for multilingual support with, global, supply chain

[Darryl E. Parker]

Rod,

Yes, this is a challenge for all. The answers will be widely varied. Unfortunately, not all areas of the county are well organized on any platform. This will grow with many attempts and failures.

Darryl

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Rod Zeigler

Ed and Darryl,
While I completely understand where you are coming from on this, I am 
coming from a different perspective.
The broadcasting community, in general, sees EAS as an overly 
burdensome, unfunded mandate. (ETRS filings are a good example)
If  the broadcaster has to (read coerced by some outside entity) select 
which languages to use in their service area, it will be the broadcaster 
that has to suffer the backlash from those communities that feel they 
were not, or under, served when their specific language was not 
selected. In these days of promiscuous litigation, that would be a real 
financial burden on the broadcaster when defending themselves. I also 
say this from the POV of my current situation. A station that covers 
multiple states in the middle of the country, and has over 20 different 
languages spoken in our COL.
If the alerting authorities (government at all levels) are required to 
make those decisions, even if there is a trigger in the alert to select 
language(s) that alerts from the broadcasters equipment will be heard 
in, it alleviates the broadcaster of that responsibility and transfers 
liability to the governmental entity who enjoys some immunity and has 
in-house legal counsel who would handle the litigation as a matter of 
due course.
The idea of multilingual alerting runs immediately into the likely 
possibility of over-alerting which will also raise the ire of the 
broadcasting community and opens another can of worms.
For broadcasters that have foreign language programming, using 
technology for alerts in that language are absolutely great and a 
no-brainer. For those foreign language speaking communities that do not 
have programming in their language available locally it becomes a 
completely different situation. As we go along in time broadcasters are 
going to see more and more pressure to provide alerts in languages other 
than their normal programming. Making government responsible for 
choosing what language is broadcast by which EAS participant seems to be 
the best way for multilingual alerting to work, even though the thought 
of government given this extra bit of power is revolting to me.
I truly believe that we all want what is best for all involved, we just 
prefer different routes to get there!
Rod

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
KRVN AM & FM  KAMI
Chairman, Ne. SECC
Exec. Dir. NEBA
www.krvn.com

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