[EAS] The Daisy Chain

[Clay Freinwald]

Bill - The FCC requires that all of it's - licensed - participants (Radio/T
V/Cable etc) transmit weekly tests.

NPR is very good about testing

PREMIERE and SIRIS/XM  are not.

Had Premiere been doing regular/periodic testing, the issue we had with
multiple stations not receiving the voice portion of the NPT could have been
prevented.

As Sean pointed out - These systems - volunteered- to help out and we have
to be careful to not come down too hard on them or they could reverse their
decision

To me there must be some middle ground here.    Hopefully the FCC and FEMA
could work to find it

Older than you in the PNW

Clay

-----Original Message-----
From: EAS <eas-bounces at radiolists.net> On Behalf Of Bill Ruck

My 2 cents worth.

The problem with many things is allocating the resources for training and
practice.

One lesson I learned from my US Naval experience is the value of drills. 
  Yes, drills are a PIA and interrupt otherwise necessary work but when bad
things happen one knows exactly what to do.

For that reason a yearly NPT is only useful to show how unstable the network
is in practice.  Looks good on paper but each test uncovers more and
different problems.

If, for example, daily tests of EAS were required -- and not just an
automatic RWT -- everyone would know exactly what to do and quickly problem
areas could be addressed.

I am not advocating tests that often but somehow the Federal Government,
both FEMA and FCC, need to find both a carrot and a stick to motivate every
station to give more than lip service to EAS.  The mostly voluntary EAS
program has never worked reliably all the way back to the days of CONELRAD.

I will now get off my soap box.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco

__________________________________________________________
The EAS Forum Discussion List is hosted by the BWWG (Broadcast Warning
Working Group). http://eas.radiolists.net Please invite your friends to join
our Forum! The sign up is at:
https://lists.radiolists.net/mailman/listinfo/eas
___________________________________________________________