[EAS] Sage update coming in Sept.

[Sean Donelan]

On Fri, 19 Jul 2019, Mike McCarthy wrote:
> None of this level of integration was really viable 20 years ago at the
> dawn of walk-away systems.  But it is now....

The biggest problem I had was both the automation vendor and EAS vendor 
want to be "in charge" of the process.

IPTV was more complicated than radio, although modern radio automation is 
rapidly getting very complicated.  The last time I tried to flowchart all 
the possible EAS alert flows, it was pre-IPAWS.  And I still needed four 
data streams: metadata, audio, video and message text; between the EAS 
system, the IPTV automation system, and the set-top display boxes.

In 2005, the Sage box was still RS232 serial ports and GPIOs. And a 
thermal printer :-)

So we went with a different (more expensive) EAS vendor and IPTV 
automation vendor.  Even while paying both of them, getting them to work 
seemlessly together was a pain.  Yes, they both wanted to "control" 
of the alert process.

And of course, even back then, I couldn't get a straight answer from the 
FCC what "live" or "immediate" meant in the EAS rules.  The FCC 
Enforcement Bureau (because that was who was in charge of the EAS 
rules back then) kept telling me to "talk to my lawyers."  The lawyers 
had no idea about the technology.

15 years later, the FCC still can't explain what "live" or "immediate" 
means.  Which makes it hard to define specifications for automation 
integration.