One last minute reminder for broadcasters – by this weekend, they need to have reprogrammed their EAS equipment with a new alert code to recognize alerts associated with nationwide EAS tests. This is supposed to be done by July 30, 2016 (the FCC set the date in paragraph 41 of last year’s FCC order reviewing on EAS, as published in the Federal Register here). By that date, all EAS participants must:

• use equipment capable of processing “six zeroes” (000000) as the national location code pertaining to every state and county in the United States; and
• use equipment capable of processing a National Periodic Test (NPT) event code for future nationwide EAS tests, including the nationwide test scheduled for September 28, 2016.

As we wrote in our article yesterday about August regulatory dates for broadcasters, there is also a deadline of August 26 to register all stations in the FCC’s new ERTS database, so that they can report on the results of the nationwide test to be held in September. So be ready for all of these FCC deadlines.