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

[Larry Wilkins]

Dave:

I totally agree with you.  My comments were only for FCC concerns with national alerts.

I have actually seen stations use the old "grey Sage" units at the remote locations to receive legacy type alert for state and local.  Loop through the main audio feed from the host station. Of course, if your state is using CAP that will not work.

 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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From: sbe-eas <sbe-eas-bounces at sbe.org> on behalf of Dave Turnmire <eassbelist at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2023 2:45 PM
To: sbe-eas at sbe.org <sbe-eas at sbe.org>
Subject: Re: [sbe-eas] Question about ETRS Form 1 requirement for stations that 100% other stations

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<mailto:lwilkins at al-ba.com>
www.al-ba.com<http://www.al-ba.com>
________________________________

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