The Trump administration should preserve the FCC Lifeline program, create multilingual emergency alert system warnings and address employment discrimination in the communications industry, according to a list of 12 "imperatives" from the Multicutural Media Telecom and Internet Council to the president-elect's transition team Friday. Other imperatives included appointing an FCC that includes diversity concerns in its rulemakings, maintaining free data programs, and banning prison phone rate overcharging. Acting on the imperatives is "vitally important" to fixing the "dismally disproportionate levels of participation among diverse groups" in the communications industry, said MMTC in a release Monday. The group also wants a '"Glide Path' for the Short-Term Survival and Long-Term Humane Decommissioning of the AM Band in a Manner that Preserves Minority Ownership."
The Stage 3 forward auction concluded in just one round Monday, as some had expected (see 1612010072). It was more than $20 billion short of the $42 billion that would have been needed to trigger the final round of the incentive auction, said the Public Reporting System. Though numerous broadcasters and analysts are still predicting the auction will close in Stage 4, several auction watchers were confused or angry about the auction's results.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler thinks “much work remains” on wireless emergency alerts, he told incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in a letter dated Nov. 17 and released Monday. “As you correctly point out, much work remains to modernize the system,” Wheeler said. “The Commission continues its work to strengthen WEA, and, as an example, has an open proceeding to determine how to include thumbnail-sized photos and symbols in WEA. I appreciate your leadership on the issue, and I am particularly pleased that we were able to answer your call to expedite enhancements to the WEA system.” He was referring to the Commission's September vote on the topic, which Schumer backed.
The FCC plans to consider real-time text and emergency alert system items and possibly others at its Dec. 15 commissioners' meeting, said the tentative agenda released Tuesday. Both the RTT and EAS items consist of a combined draft order and Further NPRM. The items circulated Tuesday, a commission official told us. The tentative agenda is due 21 days before a meeting, but was released early because of Thanksgiving on Thursday.
Sinclair CEO David Smith, perhaps the broadcast industry’s strongest individual booster of seeing ATSC 3.0 commercialized sooner rather than later, wouldn't support an ATSC 3.0 tuner mandate to drive the transition to the next-generation DTV standard, he said on a CEO panel at the NAB Show New York about ATSC 3.0's potential return on investment.
Rules requiring emergency alert system participants to report to the FCC about any efforts to provide non-English emergency alerts took effect Thursday, said the agency in that day's Federal Register. That means participants have a deadline of Nov. 3, 2017, to provide such information to State Emergency Communications committees to be included in their state EAS plans, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Harry Cole in a blog post Thursday. “Thus far there does not appear to be any officially-endorsed template for the required 'description', but it’s possible the Commission may flesh that out sometime in the next year.” The rules don't require participants to offer foreign-language alerts, and explicitly say participants can report they took no such steps, Cole said. At their March meeting, commissioners approved the rules 4-1 (see 1603300064).
Emergency alert system participants reported some problems after a nationwide EAS test in September, Gregory Cooke, an associate division chief in the FCC Public Safety Bureau, told the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee Friday. The test was the second nationwide of the EAS and, according to the early analysis, it mostly went smoothly (see 1609280074). But problems were detected, Cooke said. One-third of those who provided feedback to the FCC after the test indicated there was no problem, Cooke said. Others reported receiving audio, but not a text crawl and vice versa, he said. “In some cases, participants ran the text crawl too quickly or did not supply sufficient contrast so the text crawl could be read easily," he said. “This is a problem we have been aware of for quite a while. It’s one that is not built into the architecture. This is how individual TV and radio stations set up their system.” The FCC is working on best practices for stations so they can ensure they don't run the crawl too quickly and it's presented with proper contrast, he said. “That’s going to be an ongoing issue.” Another nationwide EAS test is likely, but hasn't been scheduled, Cooke said.
Now is the time for terrestrial TV broadcasters to start planning for the deployment of ATSC 3.0, said a new “transition and implementation guide” published Wednesday by Pearl TV, Sinclair and several broadcast equipment suppliers and consulting firms. Broadcasters have “moved with urgency and focus to finalize the ATSC 3.0 standard in an unprecedented time frame,” says the elaborate 81-page report, which also lists American Tower; Dielectric; GatesAir; Ericsson; Harmonic; Hitachi-Comark; Meintel, Sgrignoli & Wallace; and Triveni Digital as “contributors.”
The FCC released its report and order and Further NPRM on changes to rules for wireless emergency alerts (WEAs), explaining why in several cases it had overruled carrier objections. The FCC approved the order Thursday over a partial dissent by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who highlighted industry concerns (see 1609290060).
The FCC received 22,000 reports from emergency alert system participants on the results of Wednesday’s second nationwide test of the EAS (see 1609280074), said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson during a news conference Thursday. The FCC and Federal Emergency Management Agency are still compiling the results, Simpson said. He declined to say this week’s test had gone better than its 2011 predecessor, but he credited the lessons learned from that test with helping this version. Asked about the success of bilingual alerts in English and Spanish that were tried during the test, Simpson confirmed that some alerts had gone out in Spanish, though some Spanish-language stations had to broadcast in English because of a quirk of the alerting rules and the way the system functions. “That is exactly the kind of thing we wanted to test,” he said.