MAJOR MEDIA PLAYERS PLEDGE COOPERATION IN FUTURE TRAGEDIES
Some of country’s most prominent media executives, including Disney’s Michael Eisner, Rupert Murdoch of News Corp., and EchoStar CEO Charles Ergen, pledged Fri. to work with federal govt. to ensure that citizens will be able to get vital information during any future national crisis. First meeting of Medial Security & Reliability Council (MSRC) was prompted by Sept. 11, which knocked out several TV antenna towers atop World Trade Center, cutting off local TV broadcasts to hundreds of thousands of people in N.Y.C. metropolitan area who rely on over-the-air transmissions, rather than cable or satellite. MSRC, which was based on same idea as Network Reliability & Interoperability Council (NRIC) for phone service providers, was created to study and report to FCC on security, robustness and reliability of broadcast TV and multichannel video systems. Separately, FCC created Homeland Security Policy Council, which may be beneficiary of knowledge gained by MSRC. At meeting, Richard Sheirer, who was dir. of emergency management for N.Y.C. on 9/11, and Thomas Van Essen, former fire commissioner for N.Y.C., outlined difficulties they experienced in communicating with public and other public safety agencies at time.
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FCC Chmn. Powell praised media companies for coming to aid of one another during crisis, in some cases by sharing facilities or offering to carry broadcasts as public service. He suggested it might be wise to include such cooperative efforts in overall plan to ensure uninterrupted flow of media services. However, Murdoch said it was unnecessary for govt. to mandate cooperation between companies, saying 9/11 proved that companies would willingly pitch in: “I don’t think we need to formalize it. We're all professionals. We all realized we were in a national emergency. I think it’s something we do as journalists, as broadcasters, regardless.” Murdoch, whose company owns New York Post, said if Daily News burned down, his company would be first to offer to print rival newspaper. Most of media executives who spoke, particularly WABC-TV Gen. Manager Tom Kane, stressed need for redundancy in networks. Kane said only way to ensure uninterrupted local broadcasts was alternative studio and towers in separate locations -- plan he said his company was still working on. He praised satellite service providers for agreeing to transmit broadcasters’ signals to cable operators after 9/11, restoring channel for large portion of viewers.
First meeting established structure of council, with FCC officials asking each executive to designate person or persons who could serve on one of 2 working groups. Tribune COO Dennis FitzSimons is MSRC chmn. Harris Bcst. CEO Bruce Allan was named chmn. of Communications Infrastructure Security Working Group, which is to address service restoration issues across media platforms in case of attack or natural disaster and to evaluate redundancy issues. John Eck, NBC Pres.-broadcast network operations, was named leader of Public Communications & Safety Working Group, which is to study means by which govt. and media communicate emergency and public safety information to public, including Emergency Alert System. Group was to consider any special requirements needed to communicate such information to hearing and visually impaired.
Next meeting of full council was slated for mid-Nov., with several interim working group meetings until then. Although council was told to come up with report to govt. by end of MSRC’s 2-year charter, Powell said he hoped council would give executives forum to hash out many issues: To establish “best practices” for ensuring reliability, to create kind of Rolodex of emergency phone numbers to reach govt. and other officials in emergency, and to establish mutual assistance plans, perhaps without govt. involvement. - - Brigitte Greenberg