TV stations across the nation each handled the EAS test differently, with some opting to voluntarily suspend programming with informative test screens.
The first nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) occurred today at 2:00 PM EST. While we wait for the final word from broadcasters and cable companies and the subsequent compiled report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), anecdotal reports are streaming in online from across the nation with mixed reports of the effectiveness of the test, with many TV viewers and radio listeners reporting that the media outlet they were tuned to either failed to deliver the entire test message (both on-screen textual data as well as audio) or failed to switch to alert mode at all. DirecTV viewers claim to have heard pop music instead of a test message, while others (including me) had a very difficult time getting TiVo and other DVRs to tune back to regular programming after the “end of message” tones.
According to CNN, viewers in major markets like New York, Washington, Atlanta and California all reported failures. In Rhode Island I have first-hand reports from individuals tuned to WWLI-FM, the primary EAS station for Providence, who heard static and garbled audio followed by some discernible voices exclaiming “Jesus Christ, this isn’t working!” It is unknown if these voices originated at WWLI or from another station “upstream” in the EAS chain.
As far as Full Channel’s participation, it receives its primary information from WWLI-FM and passed exactly what was broadcast over FM on every analog channel and force-tuned digital set-top receiver (customers watching on digital set-tops are automatically tuned to analog version of TV Guide channel to ensure the message is received properly from the analog-based EAS system). Given that the audio channel was garbled, the system’s receiver was unable to decode the digital message normally encoded in WWLI’s broadcast.
In Santa Barbara, I was tuned to cable, over-the-air digital TV as well as three radio stations. All five outlets broke programming at some point a few minutes after 11:00 AM PST with KVMM-CD (a digital Class A TV station on channel 41) passing the on-screen textual message apparently as intended with information indicating that it had received the alert from KRUZ-FM. KEYT-TV, viewed through cable, broke programming with its own branded slate, but apparently did not pass any textual message from EAS on-screen.
On the radio side of things, I was monitoring KCSB-FM, KTYD-FM, as well as KCLU’s Santa Barbara translator K272DT. All three stations broke programming at different times, with KCSB being the first (in fact the DJs were talking about the test in the minutes leading up to it in anticipation). KCSB’s alert audio was garbled and static-filled. By the time KTYD and KCLU had activated their alerts, KCSB was returning to regular programming. All three stations appeared to pass poor quality low audio alerts along with static.
Although the FCC has scoffed at the idea that this test was a failure, saying that it was intended to uncover and address weaknesses in the system, it is discouraging that it took 50 years since the inception of the post-WWII CONELRAD system to coordinate the first nationwide test (albeit without the next generation CAP compliance yet) of broadcast media just as the once-ubiquitious stations themselves are stepping aside to make room for broadband and digital mobile technologies which are left out of the EAS loop altogether. It would seem that following this schedule, we will have the EAS problem licked just in time for the advent of telepathic entertainment!
The Anacapa School’s Near Space Exploration Club (ANSEC) successfully recovered its high-altitude balloon after a weekend flight, which returned stunning photos and environmental data from the Earth’s upper atmosphere.
On Saturday, May 21, 2011, at 9:43 a.m., ANSEC members Julio Bernal, Aubrey Cazabat, Christian Eckert and Connor Proctor along with faculty advisor Levi Maaia launched the club’s first near space balloon probe, AAHAB-1, from a site east of Paso Robles in the small community of Shandon, Calif. The group’s mission was to gather photos and environmental data as the balloon passed through the stratosphere.
The ANSEC team calculated the balloon's lift in order to ensure the craft would climb quickly.
After the probe’s two-hour and 10-minute flight over the California Central Coast, the team recovered the payload in rural Kings County, Calif., twenty miles northeast of the launch site.
“We worked so hard on this project,” said senior Aubrey Cazabat. “It was such an amazing feeling to see the capsule back on the ground and to know that we had done it!”
From the top of the balloon’s 91,122-foot ascent above 99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere, the camera had a view as far as 400 miles in all directions under a black, near space sky. The capsule’s GPS radio tracking signal was heard by amateur radio stations as far away as San Diego and Mendocino Counties.
After beginning this project in the late fall, the Anacapa students quickly learned that they had a steep learning curve ahead as they tackled challenges from wind and flight path prediction to engineering a sturdy but lightweight capsule that could survive brutally cold conditions and hurricane-force winds. Despite these hurdles, the club achieved all of its goals and retrieved extensive environmental data, including temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and radiation exposure levels, along with stunning photos of Earth’s curved surface.
“We picked up some ice on the camera window, which can be seen in a few of the higher level shots,” said senior Connor Proctor. “Other than that, all of our critical systems worked flawlessly.”
Data from the flight, including photos, a map of the flight path and environmental data, can be found at the school’s Web site www.anacapaschool.org.
Anacapa School is an independent, co-educational, WASC–accredited, college preparatory day school for junior high and high school students in grades 7-12. Founded in 1981 by Headmaster Gordon Sichi, Anacapa enjoys the best student-teacher ratio of any school, public or private, in Santa Barbara at its historic campus located in the heart of the Santa Barbara civic center.
Yesterday, Lance Orozco from the NPR affiliate station in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties came to the Anacapa School to interview my students and me about our plans to launch the Anacapa Amateur High Altitude Balloon 1 (AAHAB-1) on Saturday. His story aired this morning on KCLU.
T-minus four days, nine hours until lift off of AAHAB-1, Anacapa School’s first near space probe! What is a near space probe? Never mind that … what is “near space?”
Over the past few years the proliferation of GPS-enabled devices, as well as compact and light-weight digital photography, has helped give bloom to a burgeoning movement of amateur balloonists. These are not the Around the World in 80 Days-types that hope to circumnavigate the globe in a luxury appointed airship, but rather groups of hackers and makers who combine smart phones and Arduinos to create sophisticated weather balloons for a fraction of the cost traditionally spent by the National Weather Service and the U.S. military to explore the upper atmosphere. Near space, specifically the region of the Earth’s atmosphere between 65,000 and 100,000 feet above sea level (MSL), is the destination of choice for these amateur explorers.
Just about six months ago, four high school students from Anacapa School and I began planning to launch a high altitude balloon. Anacapa School is not the first educational group to attempt a flight like this (college-age MIT students from the 1337arts group claim to have done it for $150 in 2009), but we are certainly the first high school club in this region to organize a student-run flight. Our group, the Anacapa Near Space Exploration Club (ANSEC), decided that its radiosonde should contain the typical digital camera as well as a number of additional instruments to measure barometric pressure, temperature, humidity and even radiation levels in the environment both inside and outside of the four-pound foam cooler.
Few Earth-bound objects ever find their way up to the thin air of 100,000 feet MSL, the altitude at which we expect our balloon will burst and begin its return to the surface. A typical jet airliner tops off below 40,000 feet and even the most powerful military jets are just now finding their way above 60,000 ft. At its apex over Central California, AAHAB-1′s onboard camera will be able to see (assuming clear skies and high visibility) from San Francisco to Mexico to Las Vegas, over 400 miles in all directions, while the barometer will measure less than one percent of the atmospheric pressure found at sea level (99 percent of the Earth’s atmosphere will be below the probe at this height).
The launch, weather permitting, is scheduled to take place Saturday May 21, from one of several predetermined launch sites on the Central Coast of California. Over the next couple weeks I will continue posting information here on Maaia.com, including a complete project report and instructions to teachers and other individuals who wish to replicate a similar flight. For those interested in tracking the progress of the flight, we are using the amateur radio Amateur Packet Reporting System (APRS) to track AAHAB-1 using amateur radio call sign K6LCM-11. The onboard APRS unit will send frequent position reports to amateur radio stations across the region which will, in turn, map the flight on APRS.fi in real-time. Click here to follow along on Saturday morning using a Google Maps-based APRS system.
The first media release we sent out about the project from Anacapa School explains some more details about the flight as well. Stay tuned for more followup information.
You will find in our release that we did not choose to “drop” WUNI from our lineup. The station demanded that we take down their signal. It is Full Channel’s position that Entravision has not negotiated a fair contract in good faith (as required by the Federal Communications Commission) and is using this “blackout” as a technique to extort more money from customers of small, community-based cable operators like Full Channel. Cable customers in more-urban markets are not experiencing the same price increases from broadcasters like WUNI/Entravision.
In a time when the Consumer Price Index for recreational activities, which cable TV falls under, has actually decreased, a 33 percent increase in retransmission fees is exorbitant and particularly troubling when it effectively alienates the Hispanic community WUNI claims to serve.
Your headline implies that it was Full Channel’s choice to drop the Spanish-language network, when in fact Entravision demanded that the signal be suspended, when they would not budge from their offer.
This Letter To FCC Chairman Genachowski Regarding Retransmission was filed on February 23, 2011 regarding the Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to Amend The Commission’s Rules Governing Retransmission Consent; MB Docket No. 10-71.
Dear Chairman Genachowski:
Full Channel strongly agrees that the time has come for the Commission to review retransmission consent rules in light of recent disputes affecting millions of consumers, many of whom were unprepared for the sudden loss of broadcast network content precipitated by local TV station blackouts. Media Bureau Chief William Lake put his finger on the problem in his speech to the Media Institute last December when he stated: “When a retrans deal expires today, there can be high drama.”
With the Commission preparing to examine the marketplace in which retransmission consent is negotiated, I wanted to bring to your attention an unsettling episode involving Univision affiliate WUNI-TV and my company, Full Channel, a family-owned cable operator in Warren, R.I., with about 7,000 customers. WUNI, owned by Entravision Communications Corp., pulled its signal on Feb. 18 after Full Channel refused to accept a 33 percent increase for retransmission consent and costly demands for multicast channel and high-definition delivery.
In my view, this dispute illustrates the need for new retransmission consent rules that rectify the imbalance of power between an affiliate of the country’s dominant Spanish-language broadcaster and a small cable operator that serves a tiny fraction of TV households within the Providence, R.I.-New Bedford, Mass. designated market area.
Clearly, WUNI’s strategy of granting retransmission consent only in exchange for an exorbitant price hike and other costly demands is aided by several regulations that prevent Full Channel from negotiating as something akin to an equal on the other side of the bargaining table. This artificial imbalance hurts Full Channel’s customers, who are innocent third parties, and it should be addressed as the Commission reconsiders what exactly is acceptable conduct under the statutory requirement that broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) bargain for retransmission consent in good faith.
Full Channel believes it is vital for the Commission to provide new guidance that will yield greater certainty to the marketplace and result in fewer failed deals and dropped signals. Full Channel stands ready to assist the Commission’s search for policy outcomes that protect the interest of consumers when they are victimized by the heavy-handed tactics of a broadcaster like WUNI, which seems to have a rather strained understanding of what it means to serve in the public interest.
Sincerely,
Levi C. Maaia
Vice President, Full Channel
Warren, R.I.
Back in high school, my friends and I produced a monthly homegrown cable TV showed called “Electric Reality Television” (“Wayne’s World”-style). “E-TV,” as we called it, aired for three years from 1996-1999 in Rhode Island and featured comedy sketches and musical guests. The “E-TV” clip below is from a May 8, 1997 performance by the band Groove Relativity of their song titled simply “3.”
For more music from the band and other clips, visit my YouTube channel.
The IEEE has a great article online about the radio spectrum shortage we are facing as demand increases for mobile broadband products. Here is a quick response:
The article mentions the glaring inefficient use of radio spectrum by broadcast digital TV (DTV). Even after the DTV transition, broadcast TV still occupies nearly 300 MHz of radio spectrum to directly deliver signal to just 10% of TV viewers. However, most cable and satellite operators also get signals from local TV stations over the air and then retransmit them through their respective systems. This is an abysmally inefficient way of delivering video to consumers and a waste of valuable spectrum. Our current scenario is a point-to-point delivery (TV station to cable provider) using a wide-area broadcast model which blankets the region with signals that few actually tune directly.
We need to develop a cost-effective point-to-point delivery system (either microwave or IP) for cable and satellite operators if we are to replace the out-dated model of VHF/UHF broadcast TV. Given that nearly no one receives mobile DTV and less than 10% of TV viewers watch fixed DTV from their home, it makes sense to begin to reclaim this spectrum for broadband applications. The best solution would be to require stations to share multicast frequencies and begin the process of spectrum reclamation. Begin this reclaimation slowly at first and then as the 10% shrinks even further, get more aggressive. Given current trends toward IP mobile video, in 5-10 years there will be nearly no one – except cable and satellite providers – receiving broadcast signals over the air.
Instead of providing low-cost DTV tuners and subsidizing the wasteful DTV transition, the Feds should be subsidizing broadband development in rural areas and providing free, very basic Internet and IPTV to qualifying homes.
Dr. Giovanni Vigna, one of the UC Santa Barbara researchers who recently took down one of the largest online criminal networks talked with Tim and me on the radio this morning. He explained how he and the UCSB Computer Security Group foiled the Torpig Botnet which had nearly 200,000 zombie computers trolling for banks account numbers, passwords and personal data. Hear the conversation on this week’s podcast.
UC Santa Barbara Computer Science Professor Dr. Ben Zhao joined us on the radio this morning to talk about the privacy implications in the exploding social media scene in the wide world of Web 2.0. Listen to the podcast.
RT @tednesi: Sirius will air the Super Bowl in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch and French: htt ... [read tweet]2012/02/04
If campaigns are spending billions on advertising, why do local broadcasters charge viewers more than ever? http://t.co/xhXNRCCD[read tweet]2012/02/04
