First-Ever Nationwide EAS Test Saw Some Broadcast, Cable and DBS Glitches
The first-ever national emergency alert system test saw glitches at cable operators, DBS providers and commercial and nonprofit radio and TV broadcasters, our survey of those EAS participants and our own research found. The exercise was shortened last week to 30 seconds from three minutes, after the NCTA unsuccessfully sought a delay because many cable encoder-decoder units that pass the alert on couldn’t show video saying it was a test (CD Nov 7 p6). That prompted worries among government and industry officials that viewers would think an actual emergency occurred, but broadcast executives said that didn’t appear to have happened, based on initial reports. All EAS participants have a month and a half to report to the FCC how things went.
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Some TV stations and cable operators didn’t pass on the alert at all, because of equipment and other problems. NBC Washington affiliate WRC, owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal, ran a screen crawl saying there'd be a test, but didn’t air the test itself, viewers said. “Our automated system did not work as we hoped,” a station spokesman said: “So we're going to figure out what’s going on and report it as we should” to the FCC. NCTA members reported sporadic problems to the association, a spokesman said. Like other organizations, he said NCTA is still learning about how the test went.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency successfully triggered the test at 2 p.m. EST. There were no reports of primary entry point (PEP) stations -- which are the first line of a so-called daisy chain that passes alerts on -- not getting the emergency action notification, NAB officials said. But they said the audio on some stations was garbled, something we heard listening to public radio’s WAMU(FM) Washington. The familiar tones triggering an EAS test could be heard above the audio from the government that said it was a test, and there also appeared to be some interference. “We're still assessing the results,” an NPR spokesman said. “It will be some time before we've determined the success of the test."
Industry and government officials noted that the point of the test was to find any problems, so they can be corrected in case the president ever activates a nationwide alert. A DirecTV subscriber in Washington said the video came through, including the alert as a screen crawl, with a fixed video slate from DirecTV saying it was a test, but without the audio saying it wasn’t a real emergency. “A primary entry point system has issued an emergency action notification” read the crawl.
DirecTV is “reviewing our systems to see if the audio was delivered to us from the station we monitor,” a spokesman said. “During the test, we transmitted the emergency test tones and the video crawl, as we received them and were able to present the slide indicating this was a test.” FEMA and FCC officials declined to be interviewed to discuss the test, with the agencies each initially issuing almost verbatim written statements saying they were collecting information on the exercise.
The FCC believes the test “served the purpose for which it was intended -- to identify gaps and generate a comprehensive set of data to help strengthen our ability to communicate during real emergencies.” That’s according to a Public Safety Bureau spokeswoman, whose Wednesday evening written statement went beyond one issued earlier in the day by the commission that was almost exactly the same as FEMA’s response. “Based on preliminary data, large regions of the country received the test, but some areas did not,” she said. “We are currently in the process of collecting and analyzing data, and will reach a conclusion when that process is complete."
"Generally there were some glitches,” NAB Senior Director Kelly Williams said. “But people seem to have gotten the test and to have passed the test on,” he said of PEP stations. The exercise wasn’t “perfect, but the point is that this is a test, to ferret out things that need to be fixed,” Williams said. “From that perspective, you can kind of say this was a success.” The NAB is “hoping to learn more as time goes on,” he added. “Our initial feedback is that most radio and television stations ran the Nationwide EAS test successfully, although some isolated glitches may have occurred,” an NAB spokesman wrote.
Verizon was among the pay-TV companies reporting no problems. A subscriber said his set-top box successfully locked on a channel, as is intended, and carried the alert. The “EAS test went very smoothly with no unforeseen events impacting our approximately 4 million FiOS TV customers,” a Verizon spokesman said. “During the test, my FiOS TV connection here in the office, as expected, went black at 2 p.m. [Eastern] with the EAS alert shown on the screen. During the test, customers were not able to change channels. Following the EAS test, programming resumed as normal.”
"The nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System test was administered, and the FCC and FEMA are currently collecting data about the results,” a FEMA spokeswoman said. “This initial test was the first time we have tested the reach and scope of this technology and what additional improvements ... should be made to the system as we move forward. Only through comprehensively testing, analyzing, and improving these technologies can we ensure an effective and reliable national emergency alert and warning system."
Because of the shortened test, AT&T’s pay-TV subscribers didn’t get it, the company said late Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bmh9ut). “If the test only lasts 30 seconds, alert messages will not be transmitted to U-verse customers and their receivers may not be automatically tuned to a local news station,” Vice President Hank Hultquist said. “However, in the event of an actual emergency alert, our customers’ receivers would automatically tune to a local news station and all customers would receive the emergency alert message.”