Iridium said it will provide global emergency tracking technology to the aviation community for free. Through its subsidiary Aireon, Iridium will offer the Aireon aircraft locating and emergency response tracking (ALERT) service, letting rescue agencies request the location and last flight track of aircraft flying in airspace currently without surveillance, Aireon said in a news release Sunday (http://bit.ly/1mCF9RX). The service will work with aircraft equipped with 1090 MHz automatic dependent surveillance broadcast (ADS-B) receivers, it said. ALERT will be available after the Aireon air traffic monitoring system is fully deployed, it said. Iridium plans to launch the first payloads in that system next year (CD Feb 19 p10).
State broadcaster associations from all 50 states savaged the Local Choice proposal, which would overhaul retransmission consent rules and attempt to end TV blackouts. They objected in a National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations letter dated Thursday and expected to be sent Wednesday to the proposal’s authors -- Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., who had circulated the proposal earlier this month. The letter is the latest volley in a lobbying war with the American Television Alliance, a group of several pay-TV companies that launched a national advertising campaign in favor of Local Choice in recent days (CD Aug 27 p7). The American Television Alliance has now posted its newspaper (http://bit.ly/1qLc4zn) and radio (http://bit.ly/1tWlWJP) ads on its website. “If adopted, the proposal will unjustifiably eliminate television broadcasting’s longstanding statutory right of retransmission consent and unfairly single out the free, over-the-air, local television broadcast industry for mandatory ‘a la carte’ treatment,” the state broadcaster associations said, saying Local Choice “will very negatively impact television broadcasters and all of the nation’s viewers.” They “strongly oppose” including Local Choice as part of Commerce’s Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization legislation, expected to be unveiled in September. Local Choice “will destroy localism, including the backbone of our nation’s Emergency Alert System, by denying fair compensation to broadcasters without providing consumers, who continue to complain loudly about the monthly cost of pay-television service, with any meaningful choice or relief,” the broadcasters said. Local Choice would mean “less resources to invest in newsrooms, journalists, and local programming and perhaps even fewer broadcaster outlets to cover local affairs and emergencies in the future” and it would “chill the willingness of broadcasters to cover controversial issues of public importance.” It could chill “the journalistic and editorial decisions of every station” and throw “the economics of the nation’s local television broadcast system into chaos,” the letter said. Mandated a la carte pricing would “increase prices, decrease programming diversity, and result in fewer -- not more -- choices for consumers,” state broadcasters said, worrying it could “upend the network-affiliate relationship with potentially devastating consequences for the networks, for their affiliates and for the financial markets.” There’s also a good chance Local Choice “will likely become the slippery ‘a la carte’ slope that broadly upsets a vibrant and functioning video marketplace.” The state broadcaster associations listed several questions and considerations, asking about what would happen to existing retrans deals and how pay-TV providers would be held accountable. They asked about how Local Choice would affect reverse compensation agreements, which are tied to retrans fees. They plan to visit Senate Commerce members in Washington and in home offices to “further demonstrate our strong concerns,” they added.
Grant County Broadcasters opposed a proposal by SSR Communications to create a C4 class for FM stations. Creating a C4 class would result in a reduction in Zone II of FM translator and low-power FM opportunities “due to the additional protected coverage created for stations in the new class,” Grant County Broadcasters said in a filing posted Friday in docket RM-11727 (http://bit.ly/1lmcIY0). The stations to suffer the most from additional translator interference are the Class A stations that the original proposal was supposedly designed to “help,” it said. Such stations are the most likely to have significant audiences beyond their primary contours, like Grant’s Class A station WNKR Williamstown, Kentucky, it said. These are audiences that they can protect today, but would be lost and unrecoverable under the modified proposal, Grant County Broadcasters said. Adoption of the modified proposal also would cause major problems within the emergency alert system “as stations become cut off from their monitoring assignments due to the installation of new translators,” it said. Initial comments in the proceeding are due Sept. 18 (CD Aug 15 p10).
The FCC received wide support for use of a national location code to improve the emergency alert system (EAS), in comments on proposed rule changes for EAS. NAB and broadcast engineers backed an approach that isn’t costly to broadcasters, and consumer groups, Verizon and NCTA recommended modifications to the EAS Test Reporting System (ETRS). Comments were due Thursday. Replies are due Aug. 29 (CD July 16 p20).
Sirius XM urged the FCC to revise the 2005 emergency alert system (EAS) rules for satellite radio. The scope of the EAS testing required of satellite radio “is inconsistent with the operation of the platform and with the public’s needs,” Sirius XM said last week in an ex parte filing in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1oWhHxV). Weekly testing of Sirius’ emergency alert capabilities is “unnecessary and duplicative,” it said. The FCC can further ensure the proper functioning of emergency alert equipment “through its logging requirements, as it does for DBS, rather than requiring transmissions to listeners,” it said. If weekly testing were necessary, the FCC would require weekly announcements to be carried by all comparable media, “rather than imposing that requirement disproportionately on satellite radio,” it said. Revising the rules will reduce the burdens on Sirius XM and its customers “while imposing obligations commensurate with those required of other communications providers,” Sirius said.
Comments on proposed changes to rules governing the emergency alert system are due Aug. 14, with replies due Aug. 29, in docket 04-296, the FCC said Tuesday in a Federal Register notice (http://1.usa.gov/1r2xZWs). The FCC released the NPRM last month (CD June 30 p14). The proposals in the NPRM are intended as first steps to fix the vulnerabilities uncovered in the national EAS test, Pillsbury attorneys said Tuesday in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1apzXs4). The FCC proposes that a reasonable time period for participants to replace unsupported equipment, perform necessary upgrades and other tasks “be six months from the effective date of any rules adopted as a result of the NPRM,” they noted.
Access to emergency alert system (EAS) warnings isn’t just a Spanish-language issue, but talk about it “has basically been an English-Spanish conversation,” said Asian Americans Advancing Justice. The Asian nonprofit group, which also goes by the AAJC acronym, backed a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council FCC proposal for multilingual broadcast alerts. But “simply concentrating on Spanish” EAS alerts “or the number of markets with Spanish-language stations ignores significant limited English proficient (LEP) Asian American populations who do not receive in-language warnings about emergencies,” said AAJC. MMTC’s proposal for backup stations to transmit alerts in languages other than English when nearby non-English stations are off-air raised implementation questions for some industry commenters, while others backed much of the plan (CD May 30 p10). MMTC had cited problems with Spanish speakers not getting alerts in New Orleans in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit, which AAJC said affected Asian-Americans, too. “Federal, state, and local authorities responsible for multilingual EAS alerts must use census data and other appropriate demographic surveys and conduct community outreach to assess the languages commonly spoken in any given community,” said an AAJC comment posted Monday in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1tjwcPX). “With this knowledge, authorities at all levels can begin to ensure that language minority communities receive timely and accessible EAS alerts.” MMTC’s proposal “has always focused on all of those who speak languages other than English,” responded President David Honig in an email to us Tuesday. “Those populations sometimes have been misperceived as entirely Spanish speaking. We fully support AAJC’s observations and suggestions."
New Wave and Reach Broadband each requested a further six-month waiver of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) compliance deadline. New Wave requested a waiver for 21 of its cable systems, it said in its petition posted Tuesday in docket 04-296 (http://bit.ly/1sV4Kry). The company is working on “bringing its systems into compliance by interconnecting systems which lack broadband access to CAP-compliant headends, by purchasing equipment, and through system shutdowns,” it said. Requiring New Wave to buy and install CAP-compliant equipment in systems that it plans to interconnect to CAP-compliant headends “would be economically wasteful,” it said. Reach requests a waiver for six systems due to its lack of physical access to broadband Internet service necessary for the systems to receive CAP-formatted emergency alert messages, it said in its petition (http://bit.ly/1sV5Vaq). Reach also requested a financial hardship waiver for 15 systems, it said.
The FCC further ramped up pressure on its Communications Security, Reliability & Interoperability Council Wednesday to take the lead on cybersecurity. David Simpson, chief of the Public Safety Bureau, led off the meeting, amplifying remarks FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler made last week at the American Enterprise Institute, warning that if a private-sector-based initiative doesn’t work the FCC stands ready to impose regulation (CD June 13 p1).
A public notice proceeding on whether to establish an emergency alert system process for multilingual broadcast alerts aims to find a consensus, FCC officials said. The concept of establishing a broadcaster as a “designated hitter” to transmit EAS messages for non-English stations knocked off-air stemmed from a Minority Media and Telecommunications Council petition (CD March 13 p10). Circulating, meanwhile, is a Public Safety Bureau NPRM on issues that were identified after the first nationwide EAS test, the officials said.