WASHINGTON—U.S. broadcasters are asking a few lingering questions as the Friday deadline approaches for registering within the new EAS Test Reporting System. One of the big ones: Is my station required to register?
The Federal Communications Commission has a specific list clarifying this.
The short answer, as offered by attorney Austin Randazzo during an FCC-sponsored webinar on the ETRS system last week: If you have EAS equipment, you need to file.
Randazzo is an FCC attorney advisor at the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and moderated the webinar.
According to FCC rules, those who are required to register are analog and digital broadcast stations (AM, FM and low-power FM stations), satellite digital audio radio service providers, as well as Class A TV stations, low-power TV stations, cable systems, DBS providers and wireline video systems.
Randazzo said entities not required to file include FM broadcast booster stations and FM translator stations that entirely rebroadcast the programming of other local FM broadcast stations. In addition, international broadcast stations are exempt, as are analog and digital broadcast stations that operate as satellites or repeaters of a hub station and rebroadcast 100 percent of programming of the hub station.
But note: Those hub stations themselves must have compliant EAS equipment and register in the ETRS database.
The webinar covered a multitude of other topics including applying for an EAS monitoring waiver and how to register multiple stations.
This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication Radio World.
