Industry Groups Critical of FCC EAS Plans, Including Over Cybersecurity

Force tuning keeps viewers from benefiting from the increased information available on local broadcast channels, NAB said. The FCC shouldn’t alter the existing rules, said ACA and NCTA. Such policies serve the public interest and remain the best method for ensuring television viewers receive relevant emergency information in a timely manner, ACA said.

Force tuning “ensures” that smaller cable systems in rural and small markets “reach members of their local communities with pertinent and timely information,” ACA said. “The record shows that there continues to be no reasoned basis for the Commission to fundamentally alter the current EAS regime for cable operators,” said NCTA. “Cable operators have developed their EAS systems based upon the ability to force tune to an EAS details channel, and changing course now to mandate another method would not be workable.” Force-tuning “allows cable operators to essentially black-out broadcast news and information,” NAB said.

Broadcasters and pay TV were in lockstep against proposed rule changes to increase EAS security. “The many EAS Participants should not be penalized for the mistakes of the very few -- to be precise, television or radio broadcasters, which account for all of the sporadic security incidents cited by the NPRM over a period of eight years,” said Dish in comments that were echoed by ACA, NCTA and NAB, though with a different emphasis. “These very few instances in fact demonstrate the overall soundness of the system, given the thousands of EAS alerts and tests that are issued each year,” NAB said. EAS participants shouldn't have to certify their security measures with the commission, ACA said.

The industry groups all said they opposed FCC proposals to require reporting of false alerts. NAB said the 30-minute time frame for such reports proposed by the FCC was unrealistic and impractical. “Multiple commenters confirm that such events are extremely rare, and to the extent they may occur, the unreasonably short reporting deadlines proposed in the Notice would do more harm than good,” NCTA said.

In the order approved Monday, the FCC added codes for “Extreme Wind Warning,” “Storm Surge Watch,” and “Storm Surge Warning” to EAS, “so that communities can receive more specific and relevant alerts during hurricanes or other severe weather,” the FCC said in a news release. The updated rules require EAS equipment manufacturers to integrate the codes into new equipment and will “enable EAS participants to update their existing equipment in advance of next year’s (2017) Atlantic hurricane season,” it said. The order doesn’t require EAS participants to upgrade their existing EAS equipment to incorporate the new codes, but it does require participants who replace their EAS equipment more than one year after the order to install equipment that's able to receive and transmit the new codes.

Commissioner Mike O’Rielly partially dissented from the order because of its poor cost benefit analysis, he said in a statement released with the order. The item was pulled after O’Rielly didn’t vote on it in June because of what he called its “horrible” cost-benefit analysis. “There appears to be no attempt to quantitatively estimate the additional costs to EAS equipment manufacturers that must integrate these codes into their devices,” O’Rielly said. “Even if the burdens are small, our action today will place costs on this industry, which are not taken into account.” The item also does a poor job of quantifying benefits, O’Rielly said. “There is no evidence that the current hurricane and other severe weather codes have been insufficient in protecting life and property or that the updated marine location codes are regularly used,” said his dissent. “Without that, the benefits side of the ledger is essentially zero.”