[sbe-eas] Question about ETRS Form 1 requirement for stations that 100% other stations

[Dave Turnmire]

Legal requirements are one thing. Public service is another.  The FCC 
principally is concerned with being able to receive and rebroadcast 
national alerts... which aside from NPTs, we hope we never see.  But 
what you need to provide good service to your audience is another 
topic.  If your NOC/hub is located hundreds of miles from some of its 
stations, any monitoring it does at that location may not reflect the 
needs of the audience of those stations... local weather, local hazmat 
spills, local fires, local amber alerts, etc.

That would be a management decision regarding how important providing 
that service is.  And it is complicated by the fact that your audience 
for one transmitter in one community probably won't appreciate their 
favorite program being interrupted for an emergency in a far removed 
community.  So if you are feeding multiple transmitters for multiple 
communities widely separated geographically, using one EAS box probably 
isn't practical if you consider emergency messaging a valuable public 
service.  You may need to local EAS boxes even if the rest of the 
programming is centralized.  So there isn't one "right choice" on these 
types of things.  Just remember that there are other EAS considerations 
than just complying with FCC minimums...

Dave

On 1/24/2023 12:33 PM, Larry Wilkins wrote:
> Mike:
>
> Hope you are doing well.
>
> The way the Commission explained it to me is if you have a main 
> station that feeds 100% of its programming to other transmitters and 
> the main station has a correctly installed and programmed EAS unit in 
> the main program stream, the remote transmitters do not have to 
> install a EAS unit at their station.
>
> You may need to review your state plan to see if they issue alerts 
> locally (in each zone).  That may require units at the remote sites.  
> If they don't then just one at the main studio is legal.
>
>  Larry Wilkins CPBE
> Director of Engineering Services
> Alabama Broadcasters Association
> 334-303-2525
> lwilkins at al-ba.com
> www.al-ba.com
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
..
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