Government, Industry Ramping Up Public Education Before First-Ever Nationwide EAS Test
Emergency alert system participants are increasingly focusing outreach on consumers before next month’s first nationwide test, industry officials told us. They said the FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are shifting educational efforts from being just focused on letting radio and TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors know about the Nov. 9 test, to working on public education. The FCC has produced public service announcements about the exercise (http://xrl.us/bmfyvk), and FEMA is working on them, industry participants said. They said both agencies have been holding conference calls and meetings with the broadcasting and MVPD industries and local emergency management agencies.
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One meeting was held Wednesday afternoon behind closed doors on the FCC’s seventh floor and was organized by the Public Safety Bureau and attended by officials from FEMA, which will trigger the test, as well as broadcasting, DBS and telco-TV executives, participants said. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told the stakeholder gathering that the cost and time involved in the test are worth it because it’s essential to do the exercise, attendees said. He asked for input on what more the commission could do, and a broadcaster suggested FCC members appear in the PSAs, participants said. FCC and FEMA officials declined to comment.
Some government and industry officials expressed concerns about the readiness of local emergency managers such as emergency call centers for the test, because some viewers or listeners may call 911 thinking there’s an actual disaster, executives said. For instance, many encoder-decoder units used by cable operators from Monroe Electronics will automatically show a message during the several-minute exercise scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern that reads in part “the primary entry point system has issued an emergency action notification.” Without a crawl being added by TV stations explaining what the test is about, some who learn of the test may be confused by it, said Senior Director Ed Czarnecki. NAB and NCTA officials had no comment by our deadline.
There undoubtedly will be technical issues the nationwide exercise turns up, said American Cable Association President Matt Polka, another participant in the FCC meeting. That’s despite the “incredible amount of coordination led by FEMA and the FCC to bring government and the industry together,” he said. “There are a lot of issues out there, and chief among them is making sure the public is aware,” because “for this to happen out of the blue would be incredibly frightening, and that of course is what we want to prevent.” Cable operators are doing software and hardware upgrades before the exercise, and ACA members “have a high level of awareness of what is needed,” Polka said: “I don’t think anybody expects the test to be 100 percent” successful, “but it’s designed to help see what changes need to be made."
"Broadcasters are being encouraged to put up a background crawl” saying “this is just a test,” Czarnecki said. “The challenge is, cable is not engineered to do that in 95 percent of cases, because it goes beyond the basic requirements of the emergency alert system.” Concerns of widespread public confusion probably are a “tempest in a teapot,” though, he added. Some government officials also expressed concern during the stakeholder meeting that some public radio stations, which can get EAS alerts over an NPR satellite channel, aren’t aware of the exercise, Czarnecki said. He said such awareness may not be needed for the test to be a success.
Some broadcasters and others plan to rely on public radio stations to get the test warnings and then pass them on, industry executives said. EAS participants in Maine will do that, because the closest primary entry point station to the state is WBZ Boston, said Maine Association of Broadcasters CEO Suzanne Goucher. There could be some areas with gaps in so-called PEP coverage, where it takes 25 or 30 minutes for stations to get the warning messages, she said. NPR had no immediate comment.
"Pretty much everybody is trying to get the word out as best they can, and we appreciate that the FCC and FEMA have stepped up and produced PSAs,” said Goucher. Her biggest concern is “getting the word out to the hearing-impaired community” and also to those who take 911 calls, “to make darn sure that everyone gets the message” the exercise isn’t a real emergency, she said. “This isn’t quite as big as the DTV transition, but it’s close,” Goucher said of the 2009 switch from analog transmissions. “It’s a lot of work to get in touch with people and make sure they understand what’s going on -- but it’s better to do the work upfront rather than have people panicking in the streets."
The Public Safety Bureau will release a handbook next week about the test for EAS participants and start a system to electronically report how the exercise went, said meeting participants. “Everybody is working hard to be ready,” and it “takes practice” to hold a test, said President Pat Roberts of the Florida Association of Broadcasters. He said that among government officials and EAS participants there’s a growing “consensus to do it once a year and keep expanding it.”