{"id":5856,"date":"2015-07-10T08:48:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-10T14:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/?p=5856"},"modified":"2015-07-10T08:49:52","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T14:49:52","slug":"engineering-notebook-recent-fcc-updates-affecting-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/engineering-notebook-recent-fcc-updates-affecting-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering Notebook &#8211; Recent FCC updates affecting Engineering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>July 4, 2015<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sometime station engineers, because of &#8220;workload&#8221; or &#8220;not being in the loop&#8221;, miss important updates from the FCC that affect the technical department.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Here is a brief outline of some of the more recent changes&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0Audible Crawl Rule:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The FCC adopted an Audible Crawl Rule back in April 2013.\u00a0 This rule would require all television stations to present aurally on a secondary audio program stream (&#8220;SAP&#8221;) any non-newscast emergency information that a station presents visually.\u00a0 As adopted, the rule would have required all emergency information presented visually to be fully conveyed verbally on the SAP twice, including weather maps and school closings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The original deadline was May 26, 2015. \u00a0However the general compliance deadline has been extended per a request from the NAB by six months to November 30, 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In addition the FCC announced that it will waive the requirement to aurally describe visual but non-textual emergency information.\u00a0\u00a0 Graphical information, such as a Doppler Radar map, does not contain text files that can simply be converted to speech.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">However that waiver is for only 18 months.\u00a0 Broadcasters now have until November 2016 before the FCC will require them to &#8220;aurally describe the critical details regarding the emergency and how to respond to the emergency . . . including the critical details conveyed solely by a map or other graphic display.&#8221;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Video Description Obligation:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0As of Wednesday, July 1, 2015, TV stations affiliated with the Top Four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) in the top 60 markets are required to provide 50 hours of video description per calendar quarter.\u00a0 In Alabama those markets include Birmingham (40) and Mobile-Pensacola (60).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In addition, the FCC noted that the video description rules require all stations to pass through video description when it is provided by their network if the station has the technical capability to do so.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Revised EAS Rules:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">As we covered in an <a href=\"http:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/engineering-notebook-fcc-issues-proposed-new-rules-for-national-eas-test\/\">Engineering Notebook a few weeks ago<\/a> the FCC issued an Order updating its rules to establish operational standards to be used during national EAS tests and emergencies. Those revisions have now been published in the Federal Register, so we know that they will take effect on July 30, 2015.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Specifically, the Commission has adopted &#8220;six zeroes&#8221; (000000) as the national location code pertaining to every state and county in the U.S. in order to make EAS consistent with Common Alerting Protocol (&#8220;CAP&#8221;) standards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Order also adopted a new rule regarding the use of a National Periodic Test (&#8220;NPT&#8221;) event code for future EAS testing, which is designed to bring consistency to the operation of EAS equipment in future national, regional, state, and local activations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Basically all EAS receivers will need to be able to receive the NPT code and respond to the national location code within one year from the effective date of the new rules.\u00a0 That date is now set for\u00a0July 30th,\u00a02016.\u00a0 The FCC is also setting up an Electronic Test Reporting System (ETRS), which be used to report reception of the National EAS Test.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The ABA will publish shortly a detailed information sheet on procedure for setting up the National Test filter in your equipment.\u00a0 If you have questions concerning setting a new filter in your EAS equipment contact the<\/span> <a href=\"mailto:lwilkins@al-ba.com\" target=\"_blank\" shape=\"rect\">Alabama EAS committee<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><b><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Radio Broadcast Engineering class July 13th &#8211; 17th.<\/span> \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/r20.rs6.net\/tn.jsp?f=001ziGM0AyeFwumJgYQbwxUO1uXOKnd6KYdZu3ZJYEBaUBL7EZZDnBF2fR2O-0kCXm4m-Pg2zt_157r_jrpuXh5t5lR2aHGio-r-ecxibDgPounqP_j2hbxu5fC6sgHM2q_GkViRJ-qCCKNnleX8HUKdVEYhc5Am-p6OPZPU0OU6cj7lnp9yb2IJBLgFcz9Az3U7gJJq4QVe3GhqSfC2Ixq-4wLQhpFK-TCDNyqR4PGwas=&amp;c=O-dB7ridiC92BDKZiY7PlyaWGQqUwyvnMMTNXmHmoRm9n7eE6nuk_Q==&amp;ch=7x5XVTk1kh1Xb-MERL_Jt7y38EPqlt9Dwz19nxfdE6pCP5u4786l1g==\" target=\"_blank\" shape=\"rect\">Register online now<\/a>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><b><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/files.ctctcdn.com\/6ca92027201\/580d64c8-f32c-46ec-837d-bf5a0a06aa26.jpg\" width=\"370\" name=\"ACCOUNT.IMAGE.210\" border=\"0\" hspace=\"5\" vspace=\"5\" \/><\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\" align=\"right\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>ABA Corporate Sponsor<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"right\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Larry Wilkins CPBE\u00ae<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">Alabama Broadcasters Association<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #000000;\">334-303-2525<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 4, 2015 Sometime station engineers, because of &#8220;workload&#8221; or &#8220;not being in the loop&#8221;, miss important updates from the FCC that affect the technical department. Here is a brief outline of some of the more recent changes&#8230; \u00a0Audible Crawl Rule: The FCC adopted an Audible Crawl Rule back in April 2013.\u00a0 This rule would &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/engineering-notebook-recent-fcc-updates-affecting-engineering\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Engineering Notebook &#8211; Recent FCC updates affecting Engineering<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dead"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5856"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5858,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5856\/revisions\/5858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/al-ba.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}