false EAS alerts

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  • The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau entered into a Consent Decree with a public broadcaster to resolve an investigation into whether false
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Using the EAS alert tones without a real emergency has led to several FCC fines in recent years – including many fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (see, for instance, our articles here, here, and here).  This week, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau released a Consent Decree with a noncommercial radio group (American Public Media Group, Minnesota Public Radio d/b/a American Public Media, and Southern California Public Radio)  to settle an investigation into the use of these tones in a BBC program about chasing tornadoes that ran on the group’s stations, and on other public broadcasting stations around the country to which the group syndicated the program.  As part of this decree, the group agreed to pay $86,400 to the government.  According to the decree, the program included two instances where EAS tones were used, and pieces of NOAA tornado warning alert audio were also aired.  In total, 46 stations associated with the group, and about 500 other stations that received the program from the group, ran these tones. 

The use of EAS tones without a real emergency (or in connection with an authorized test) violated Section 11.45 of the Commission’s rules.   As noted in the Consent Decree, the Commission believes that the use of simulated or actual EAS Tones for non-authorized purposes—such as commercial or entertainment purposes—can lead to dangerous “alert fatigue” where the public becomes desensitized to the alerts, questioning whether the alerts are for a real, imminent threat or some other cause. Moreover, the broadcast of these EAS Tones could result in false activations of the Emergency Alert System, as any stations that monitor a station that runs a false alert may have their own EAS equipment triggered – theoretically cascading the alert throughout the system.Continue Reading $86,400 Penalty on Noncommercial Broadcaster for Use of EAS Tones in Programming When No Emergency Existed

  • Congress failed to include the AM For Every Vehicle Act in their year-end omnibus spending legislation, meaning that the bill
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  • The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau released its second EEO audit notice for 2024.  Audited stations and their station employment units (commonly
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Monday was the 85th anniversary of the Mercury Players broadcast of the Orson Welles production of The War of the Worlds – a radio broadcast that seemingly scared many Americans into thinking that the country was under attack by Martians, that my home state of New Jersey had been overrun, and that the rest of the country would soon follow.  There has been much media coverage of that broadcast in the last week.  Ten years ago, on its 75th anniversary, we wrote an article that is worth revisiting now, with some edits to look at more recent activity that might bear on any repeat of The War of the Worlds controversy.

On the 75th anniversary of The War of the Worlds broadcast, PBS’s American Experience ran a great documentary about the production – talking about Orson Welles’ decision to delay an announcement that the program was a fictional production, not a real invasion, long after his network superiors ordered that announcement because the network phone lines were tied up with anxious callers.  Also tied up were the phone lines of emergency responders, and the broadcast supposedly caused people to leave their homes to flee the path of the oncoming invaders.  The PBS program talked about how the FCC opened an investigation into the program, and how Congress demanded that laws be passed to prevent such a broadcast from happening again.  Essentially, through some well-publicized apologies by Welles and others involved in the program, and a promise by the network to take steps to prevent it from happening again, the FCC closed its investigation, and no law was passed by Congress.  Even though the government did not act 75 years ago, it is interesting to look at how the FCC has changed since that time, and why such a broadcast would not fly under FCC rules today.Continue Reading Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds Turns 85 – Could the Panic It Caused Happen Today? 

The recent $504,000 fine proposed to be levied on Fox for the use of simulated EAS tones in an NFL football promotion (see FCC’s Notice of Apparent Liability here) is obviously a message to broadcasters to remember that EAS tones can only be used for real alerts or authorized tests of the system – and not in any advertising, programming or promotions.  This is consistent with past big fines for improper use of these simulated EAS tones (see, for instance, the cases we wrote about here, here, and here).  This aspect of the Fox case – don’t use EAS tones except for real EAS purposes – has been well noted.  What has received less attention are the small details that went into this big proposed fine.

The most obvious of these details was the short duration of the EAS tones that led to the violation itself – the use was only 3 seconds long.  The Commission found that even a 3 second use of EAS tones was sufficient to confuse the public about a possible emergency or to contribute to possible desensitization of the public to the importance of these tones. But this is not the first situation where the FCC has imposed a very large fine for a violation that occurred only very briefly – one of the most obvious situations being a $325,000 indecency fine for a 3 second image of sexual organs in a corner of a TV screen when a station broadcast a screenshot of the homepage of an adult website to illustrate a news story about a former adult film star who became a local first responder (see our summary of that case, here).  Both in the recent EAS case and in the case of the indecency violation, the issues were not caught in the production of the on-air segments or in any pre-broadcast review of the programming before it was broadcast.  Both cases serve as a reminder that stations need to not take anything for granted in their pre-broadcast review of programming segments, reinforcing the need to carefully inspect everything that goes out over the air, as even 3 second violations can lead to fines that exceed $100,000 per second.Continue Reading $504,000 Proposed Fine for Improper Use of EAS Tones – How Little Things Can Add Up to Big FCC Penalties

  • The FCC issued a Public Notice extending the deadlines for all filings in the FCC’s LMS or online public file
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In our summary of this week’s regulatory actions of importance to broadcasters, we noted that the FCC sent an email to broadcasters last week warning them of a cybersecurity flaw in the DASDEC EAS encoder/decoder device sold by Digital Alert Systems (formerly Monroe Electronics), using software prior to version 4.1. The email states that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued an advisory expressing concern that there is a vulnerability in the code used by the system that can be used by remote attackers.  The CISA advisory provides the technical details of the vulnerability.

The fear is that this security flaw can allow bad actors to access not only to the EAS system but, if that system is connected to other station computer networks, to other station information and systems as well.  Securing the EAS system has been a priority of the FCC, with a pending rulemaking proposal (about which we wrote here) that would require stations to adopt cybersecurity plans to secure these systems and report yearly to the FCC about those plans (and report breaches when the station learns of such breaches or when they should have learned about the breach).  The FCC already requires that false EAS alerts be reported to the FCC within 24 hours (see our article here) – but the new proposal would require FCC notice even if no false alert occurred.  With the FCC contemplating the imposition of these obligations on broadcasters, and (of paramount priority) the risks that station operations can be compromised by any cyberbreach, stations need to be extra-vigilant in their cybersecurity considerations.  Thus, any stations that use the identified encoder/decoder must be sure that they have taken the proper actions to secure their stations.
Continue Reading FCC Warns Broadcasters of Specific Cybersecurity Flaw in One EAS Provider’s Equipment – Why Broadcasters Need to Pay Attention