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Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Broadcasters, Cable Protest FCC Emergency Plans

Broadcast and cable television companies are pushing back against the FCC’s new plans for emergency alert messages.

The Hill is reporting that trade groups this month told the FCC that its new proposed guidelines for the text that crawls at the top of the screen during a flood, snowstorm or other emergency aren’t necessary and could be expensive.

Current cable systems “generally display visual crawls that are readable by viewers, do not pass too quickly, and continue throughout the duration of the EAS [Emergency Alert Service] activation,” the National Cable and Telecommunications Association told the FCC this month. “Standardizing the appearance of EAS messages for speed and size is unnecessary to address accessibility concerns and would lead to significant cost with little benefit.”

The National Association of Broadcasters, too, objected to the FCC’s attempt to write new standards for the text messages during emergency alerts.

“Given the multiplicity of sources that may deliver EAS messages and emergency information to stations — some of which a broadcast television station may or may not control — and the various ways stations may present that information, imposing specific standards for the visual presentation of EAS text crawls would not be an effective approach to enhancing the accessibility of EAS crawls,” the group said.

The FCC is working on new guidelines for the text that runs during an alert as part of its broader overhaul of the emergency system that will create a new national location code for transmitting emergency messages nationwide.

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