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What's going to happen with the National EAS test

greg.hahn

greg.hahn

There sure is a lot of angst going on over this EAS test. It's good I guess, but it shows a whole lot of people never worried one bit about the EAS system until now. And I fear that after November 9, people will go right back to where they were before the test, totally complacent.

So there have been meetings held across the country, using thousands of man-hours, planning for this test. If it was a true test there wouldn't be any meetings at all. They should have tested the system in July without telling anybody. ;)

But seriously, what's going to happen that day? Does anyone think it's going to go off without a hitch?

I can almost promise you that some PEP or LP1 will drop the ball and entire sections of the country will miss the test completely. Then what? When that happens, somebody blew an EAS test for the week of November 9.

Will there be fines and loss of license? Or will it just simply be a case of log it and forget it, and much ado about nothing?

It'll be much ado about nothing.
 
greg.hahn said:
There sure is a lot of angst going on over this EAS test. It's good I guess, but it shows a whole lot of people never worried one bit about the EAS system until now. And I fear that after November 9, people will go right back to where they were before the test, totally complacent.

So there have been meetings held across the country, using thousands of man-hours, planning for this test. If it was a true test there wouldn't be any meetings at all. They should have tested the system in July without telling anybody. ;)

But seriously, what's going to happen that day? Does anyone think it's going to go off without a hitch?

I can almost promise you that some PEP or LP1 will drop the ball and entire sections of the country will miss the test completely. Then what? When that happens, somebody blew an EAS test for the week of November 9.
Will there be fines and loss of license? Or will it just simply be a case of log it and forget it, and much ado about nothing?

It'll be much ado about nothing.
Click to expand...


According to the FCC, there will be no enforcement action directly as a result of the test. The PEP stations have been pressing for a test for years (almost 14). On 11-9-11 there will be discovery, analysis, solutions developed, corrections made, then a re-test at some point. The only thing that can be guaranteed is that 11-9-11 is going to be quite an interesting day...

Best regards,

w/
 
My EAS box monitors WSM in addition to our LP, so I have no angst. I can't imagine WSM missing it unless the folks in Washington get something wrong.

Other stations, well, I wouldn't be surprised if they miss it, and have no idea why.
 
I know about 3/4 of my state will probably get their test via NPR. The PEP is in Tulsa and the feed point for the whole state in OKC.... Not exactly the best of plans (but people in the state really didn't get much input apperently). So, it's a feed off the squawk channel over to the NPR station's EAS box, then over their flimsy class A FM signal to the big boys to pump it to the rest of the state. Tulsan's will get theirs from KRMG. The rest of us probably won't. I'm guessing in some states similar situations will be patched around like patches on a old, wore out tire. In some places they've been running on the rims for years, so it'll just be business as usual where nothing works right.
 
My guess is since your relaying their live audio ... be prepared to take quick action if for some reason something happens and instead of the test you end up with another stations 'format' on yours. :)
 
xmusicmatt said:
My guess is since your relaying their live audio ... be prepared to take quick action if for some reason something happens and instead of the test you end up with another stations 'format' on yours. :)
Click to expand...

Good point. I've heard what happens when the LP1 "forgets" the EOM tones.
 
I'll be standing by ours to make damn sure I'm not creating that issue as I have a ton of people downwind from us on this deal. I guess the most important thing for people to remember is to hit the ABORT button after a period of time and things look goofed up, not to unplug the box.
 
The National Cable Television Association wants the test postponed because some systems can't put up a slide on their channels saying it's only a test (the EAS crawl for an EAN does not say it's a test but an actual alert). Their argument is if you are deaf, you won't know it's a test. Kinda late to bring this problem up.
 
ncradioeng said:
The National Cable Television Association wants the test postponed because some systems can't put up a slide on their channels saying it's only a test (the EAS crawl for an EAN does not say it's a test but an actual alert). Their argument is if you are deaf, you won't know it's a test. Kinda late to bring this problem up.
Click to expand...
We're planning to air a generic (no local station ID) graphic, with a big, honkin' green crawl at the bottom saying it's only a test (actually, giving a bit of an explanation of what is happening), and letting the Cable Company use it for video.
 
What a perfect excuse to "have" a national emergency.

What a perfect time to "plan" a national emergency.

I'm innately suspicious of this.

Should something actually "emerge", we'll find our preparedness is lacking,
and maybe even something about where our real values are.
 
I see this exercise as being as beneficial as Y2K:
I will get a lot of junk devices out of service and awaken some station owners as to their responsibility. ???

Will 0bama use it? ::)
 
littlejohn said:
The conspiracy theorists are having a field day over this.
Click to expand...

Oh yes; however, discussion of testing this thing as a system has gone on since the beginning of the current PEP system in 1991 and also back into the old BSPP system. PEPAC, Primary Entry Point Advisory Committee, has been pressing for a national test of the system since its formation. The pressure *REALLY* ramped up when it was discovered there had been no encoder/decoder cross platform testing and the discovery that in some boxes the EAN could be deleted while the RWT and RMT filters were in tact. Following the EAN release in Illinois in 2007 and lessons learned from that, PEPAC conducted extensive testing of all available EAS boxes in early 2008 and submitted a report to FEMA and the FCC with recommendations including National testing using hot codes.

So this all didn't just blow up recently, been going on for a long time.

Best regards,
w/
 
Who knows, for sure, whether stations must have the D.C. FIPS 011001 code programmed into their EAS Decoder in order to auto-forward the upcoming Nationwide EAS Test??
 
DTV-Chief said:
Who knows, for sure, whether stations must have the D.C. FIPS 011001 code programmed into their EAS Decoder in order to auto-forward the upcoming Nationwide EAS Test??
Click to expand...

Only one current brand may need the D.C. FIPS code added depending on the software version it is running. Please consider calling the good folks at Trilithic if you have questions.... There is no "all of US" FIPS code.
 
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