NAB sees no need for a “complex redesign” of EAS

The National Association of Broadcasters believes many of the pieces needed to improve emergency alerting in the United States are already in place and no major overhaul of existing EAS is needed.

The FCC’s pursuit of ways to improve the utility of EAS to more effectively reach larger segments of the population, especially persons who are deaf or hard of hearing with more visual alerts, has generated many responses from legacy EAS stakeholders.

The FCC’s EAS Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in 2021 was part of a broader rulemaking proposal seeking ways to modify the text associated with national EAS messages, including pre-stored templates for NPT messages. It also proposed requiring “triggered” CAP polling by broadcasters.