The Emergency Alert System “has not reached its maximum usefulness thanks to the evolution of modern technology.” Those are comments made by state broadcast associations in a recent joint filing with the FCC.
The filing is one of dozens made by Emergency Alert System stakeholders as part of an FCC proceeding that asked for public comment on whether fundamental changes could make the EAS and WEA [Wireless Emergency Alerts] “more effective, efficient and better able to serve the public’s needs.”
The joint comments from the state broadcast associations seek clarification of ways for the FCC to distinguish between “emergency alerting and providing supplemental information.” It’s an important distinction during an emergency, according to the groups.
“Maintaining a separation between these two very different types of messages assures that emergency systems do not stray from the targeted goal of alerting the public, which would have the effect of taxing emergency networks and increasing the public’s alert fatigue, potentially at great costs to EAS participants,” the state broadcast associations said.
The groups continued: “Ultimately, any successful alerting ecosystem will need to balance the many priorities and proposals presented in this proceeding.”
Public safety depends on multiple, redundant communication paths, the groups say, yet new communications platforms like video games and streaming, as well as new alerting methods such as local opt-in text messaging, are fracturing the audience for all alerting methods.
The state associations also warn that if all of the proposals from the proceeding were adopted by the FCC, the resulting alert fatigue could be staggering, undermining rather than enhancing the effectiveness of the alert system.
The broadcast advocacy groups also alerted the FCC to the harms imposing new requirements via government mandates could cause, rather than allowing EAS to grow through “voluntary organic improvements.” Lastly, the filing stressed the need for improved training and coordination among alert originators and government agencies.
“The record confirms that broadcast EAS remains indispensable, that technical evolution has led to numerous improvements that will continue into the future, that any new government mandate on EAS would only impede these steady voluntary improvements and that the most effective step the commission can now take is to collaboratively strengthen training for alert originators and promote better coordination among the multiple parties in the alerting ecosystem,” they told the FCC in their comments.
Meanwhile, Xperi continues to advocate for its HD Radio technology and its value in enhancing emergency alerting capabilities. The broadcast technology company also urges the commission to consider the broader infrastructure vulnerabilities that may impact the reliability and reach of the nation’s emergency alerting systems, particularly in rural and Tribal communities.
In its own reply comments, Xperi points to new potential vulnerabilities in the alerting ecosystem — in particular, increased uncertainty about the future of The Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), which is facing uncertainty due to changes in CPB funding and operational oversight.
[Related: “Xperi and Global Security Systems Pitch Emergency Alerting Improvements“]
In addition, the company says budget reductions to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service “may impact the origination and coordination of alerts, particularly in remote areas.”
The commission should recognize “that modernizing and enhancing the nation’s public alerting capabilities requires not only technological innovation, but also maintenance and stewardship of the key pillars of the nation’s existing alerting infrastructure,” Xperi said in its comments.
Xperi also suggests that the FCC should support redundancy and reliability in alert delivery mechanisms, including analog and digital radio pathways.
The FCC’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on improving emergency alerting has drawn comments from a variety of emergency management organizations, which represent the emergency managers who originate emergency alerts.
In more jointly-filed comments, three groups representing emergency managers specifically highlighted the role public media plays in the public warning ecosystem. In evaluating how new technologies can improve emergency alerting, the FCC “should not overlook the value of the existing emergency alerting technologies. In particular, public broadcasters.”
The groups said: “Emergency managers rely on public broadcasters, including public radio stations, to send life-saving emergency alerts to residents in rural, suburban and metropolitan areas. The interconnected public broadcasting system reaches 99 percent of the country and is the only system capable of broadcasting these alerts to every corner of our nation.”
[Related: “NAB Says EAS Improvements Should Preserve Current System“]
The groups urge the commission to continue to recognize the value that public broadcasters provide the nation’s emergency alerting systems. It asks the FCC to ensure that efforts to advance public safety through new technologies “do not overlook, or, worse yet harm, the effectiveness and efficiency of current emergency alerting partners, like public radio stations.”
The Office of the Attorney General of New York even weighed in with comments in the FCC’s proceeding on modernizing public alerting. The AG’s office limited its reply comments to the expansion of multilingual access, including American Sign Language (ASL), to text-based alerts.
The office of New York’s top law enforcement official, Letitia James, reminded the FCC that the commission approved a template-based system to substantially expand accessibility to WEA by requiring that alerts be supported in the 13 most commonly-spoken languages in the U.S. besides English, as well as ASL. However, James’ office says current FCC regulations presently require that wireless companies participating in WEA support alerts transmitted in only one non-English language — Spanish.
“That order stated that the wireless industry would be under a duty to comply within 30 months of the publication in the Federal Register of a subsequent implementation order by the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau,” wrote James.
The PSHSB’s adoption of a Report and Order in January 2025, detailing implementation parameters for template-based multilingual WEA, has yet to be published in the Federal Register, according to NY’s AG office.
The letter, signed by the state’s Assistant Attorney General Max Shterngel, uses as an example the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, when emergency alerts were sent exclusively in English, while tens of thousands of Asian Americans faced life-threatening emergencies without access to critical safety information in languages they could understand.
“Nearly 50,000 Asian Americans lived within the evacuation zones of the Eaton, Palisades, Hurst and Hughes fires, with over 12,000 requiring language assistance due to limited English proficiency.
“When the evacuation orders were issued exclusively in English, entire communities speaking Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese were left without clear, actionable information about how to safely evacuate,” read the letter.
Radio World’s email to the FCC seeking further clarifications about the current multilingual capabilities of WEA alerts was not immediately returned.
Access the filed comments here.
[Related: “FCC’s “Ground Up” Review of Public Warning Systems Generates Buzz“]
