Two FCC orders issued this month provide some insight into how broadcasters should communicate with the commission if they want to take EAS equipment offline to move it.
Section 11.35 of the rules requires EAS participants to ensure that their equipment is “installed so that the monitoring and transmitting functions are available during the times the stations and systems are in operation.”
In the first order, the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau granted a waiver to Fort Myers Broadcasting in Florida for three radio stations that FMBC is relocating.
FMBC told the FCC that it would need to “to uninstall, pack, move and reinstall the EAS equipment” and that the stations would not be in compliance for up to two hours.
It said its new location “is better protected from flood risk” and said a limited EAS outage to move the equipment was unavoidable. It said the harm would be minimal because no other stations rely on its EAS signal; relocation would not occur during a scheduled test; and the company would not proceed if there appeared to be any risk of an emergency event.
The FCC granted the waiver. (You can read that order here.)
Then in a separate but related order, the FCC granted a similar waiver to Sun Broadcasting Inc. to allow it to move EAS equipment for four of its own stations from the same location.
Sun operates under a shared services agreement with FMBC in which Sun rents space and FMBC maintains Sun’s EAS gear. The FCC said OK to those four stations but declined a waiver for two more because Sun didn’t supply enough information. It said Sun could resubmit. (You can read that order here.)
As a side note: FMBC and Sun both pointed out that EAS participants are allowed to operate without alerting equipment for up to 60 days pending repair or replacement of defective equipment. But in its orders the FCC emphasized that the exemption does not apply to the relocation of functioning EAS equipment. “Simply disconnecting EAS equipment from operation does not make it defective,” the bureau wrote.
The FCC staff also noted that Sun filed only three business days before the date of its requested relief. “While the bureau appreciates that Sun sought to conform its conduct with the rules and encourages similarly situated EAS participants to seek a waiver if circumstances require, the bureau urges parties to do so as far as possible in advance of their expected need for relief to afford the commission sufficient time to consider such requests.”
