Are you a broadcaster or just a content provider?
This is the question I posed at the beginning of my presentation at NAB 2009 in Las Vegas this morning. Broadcasters have seen precipitous declines in over-the-air viewing, while continuing to pay tens of thousands of dollars a month maintaining those transmissions. New uses for …

Florida Emergency Management head Craig Fugate was recently named by President Obama as his choice to take the reins at FEMA.
The choice of Fugate may have some interesting implications for public alert and warning at a national level. He’s been intimately involved in the deployment of multiple public warning capabilities, knows EAS and appreciates …

Posted By: Rodger Melchior, SpectraRep
In talking with many state EAS Chairs and Broadcasters, it seems that just about all are familiar with the FCC’s 2nd report and order mandating that EAS participants must have the ability to accept a Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) message within 180 days from the date that FEMA announces a systems …

Posted by: Edward Czarnecki
Senior Vice President, SpectraRep
As a courtesy to our colleagues in the emergency management and broadcast industry, we’ll be providing occasional updates as to key developments in the countdown towards the migration of broadcast EAS to an Advanced CAP-based EAS.
As you recall, the FCC set the ball in motion when it decided in …

Posted by Edward Czarnecki
Vice President, SpectraRep
The Federal Communications Commission recently held an Emergency Alert System Summit, ostensibly to foster dialogue between the private sector and the government players and to assess the current state of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and its future.
EAS was put into place in 1994, replacing the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). …

Posted by: Edward Czarnecki,
Senior Vice President, SpectraRep
The continuing backdrop of homeland security threats – crossing a broad spectrum of contingencies from acts of terrorism to natural disasters to other human-made hazards (accidental or intentional) – highlight the importance of timely and effective warnings at the national, state and local levels. The ultimate goal is to …