Draft EAS Item Considered Noncontroversial
An NPRM and notice of inquiry on accessibility in emergency alert system messages are likely to be unanimously approved as-is, said FCC and industry officials in interviews. Alerting industry officials said the agency’s proposals need fine-tuning, but strong industry pushback isn’t expected. Accessible alerts are “certainly a laudable goal,” said Sage Alerting President Harold Price. Comments on the item would go to docket 15-94.
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The draft NPRM seeks comment on methods to make the text portion of EAS messages convey the same amount of information as the audio portion. The draft proposes requiring stations to check for and use whenever possible the internet-based common alerting protocol (CAP) versions of EAS messages, which are able to deliver larger amounts of text. Under current rules, a station alert can be triggered by either the CAP or the legacy daisy-chain system, in which the emergency tones of one station trigger alerts in other stations monitoring their feed.
Most existing EAS equipment in broadcast stations has the CAP capability, or could be quickly updated to have it, said both Price and Digital Alert Systems Vice President Ed Czarnecki. “There’s a lot of benefits to having more descriptive text,” Czarnecki said.
CAP messages have the capability for higher quality audio, which is also an accessibility improvement, Czarnecki said. Some alert originators may not have the text-to-speech capabilities to take advantage of CAP’s audio, which could lead to more uneven audio among alert messages overall, Price said.
Checking for the CAP alert before relaying the EAS message could also introduce a delay in message transmission, Price noted. Though that may be only 30 seconds, “that’s 30 seconds where you could be running,” Price said. Those are concerns likely to come out during the commenting process, Price and Czarnecki said.
The FCC endorsed prioritizing CAP messages in previous proceedings (see 1804160064). Stations using CAP messages at a higher frequency are also likely to increase the amount of multilingual EAS alerts, which nearly always are delivered over CAP (see 1612280045).
The draft NPRM proposes requiring a predetermined script as the visual message for nationwide EAS tests triggered through the legacy system, to make it clearer the alert is a test message. “That’s easy enough to do,” said Price.
“Taken together, we believe that the proposals in the NPRM will have a real near-term impact on the clarity of the visual information provided with nationwide EAS tests and legacy EAS alerts for everyone who receives these messages,” says the draft NPRM. This and other recent EAS proceedings on emergency alerts (see 2105170064) under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel show that alerting has become a particular focus of her agency, said Czarnecki.
The draft NOI seeks comment on how legacy daisy-chain EAS "can be modified, augmented, or redesigned" to allow expanded text. The legacy system is needed alongside CAP because it's more resilient, and doesn't require Internet connectivity, which is often lost in an emergency, Price said. Legacy messages don't convey as much information as CAP, "but they're a heck of a lot better than nothing," Czarnecki said. Expanding the capability of the traditional system might be difficult because of technical concerns and alert fatigue, Price said. More text would mean test messages familiarly airing on radio and TV would last longer, increasing the likelihood a viewer/listener would change the channel, he said. "If you're suddenly hearing alert tones for 30 or 60 seconds, you're gonna think something is wrong with the system."