[EAS] New 2021 EAS Operating Handbook

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 23 Jun 2021, Dave Kline wrote:
> In all honesty, I am guilty of not giving much thought to the EAT as of 
> late. Hmmm... how do the cool kids terminate an EAN these days?

Of course, the FCC removed the EAT for the rules, or as protocol designers 
would say "deprecated" EAT because backwards compatibility in protocol 
design means nothing is really gone - just not used anymore.

I was thinking about how to do FEMA's "persistent" national alerts, 
instead of "repeating" alerts.  On a really bad, bad day scenario what 
would be the concept of operations?  We don't want "persistent" alert to 
disrupt other information or news broadcasts. My thought is the persistent 
alert would act like a "weather bug" in a corner of the screen or 
part of the ATSC3.0 metadata stream, for people who missed the initial alert.

EAN/EAT could act as book-ends for a persistent national alert situation.

The problem with a persistent alert is how to end or cancel it.  EAT was a 
defined "end" code. Other programming and alerts could continue normally 
while a persistent alert is active. The EAT would end the persistent 
alert status, i.e. remove the "weather bug" icon or test. The persistent 
alert capability would only apply to the national alert.

Its less about the technical protocol elements, and more about FEMA 
defining a concept of operations.