After One

The radio industry will once again be called into action to test the Emergency Alert System after a one-year break in 2022. Sources at the Federal Emergency Management Agency tell Inside Radio that while a date for a national test of EAS has not yet been set, a decision has been made to return to what has become an annual tradition in recent years for broadcasters.

“FEMA in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission, plan to conduct a national test of the Emergency Alert System and Wireless Emergency Alerts later this year,” the insider said. “A date will be announced when the test date is confirmed,” they added. In the past, regulators have typically held the test in mid- to late-summer.

FEMA dropped a surprise on broadcasters last year when it announced there would be no EAS test. The skipped year was by design, as the agency said it was working to develop a new survey system that would allow the government to better monitor the results of the national tests of both EAS and the Wireless Alert System (WEA). The survey would poll the public about whether they heard or saw the alerts. The information would then be shared with broadcasters and the wireless industry.

By having a better read on where the alerts were and were not received, Antwane Johnson, Director of the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) program, said last year that the information would be used by FEMA to improve its alert and warning capabilities.

The national test of the Emergency Alert System has become a near-annual tradition since the first one was conducted in 2011. But during the past few years that cycle has been broken. In addition to skipping last year, FEMA also skipped a national test in 2020. It concluded broadcasters and federal agencies had enough on their plates coping with the pandemic and put off a national EAS test.

The report on the last national test in 2021 showed the test message reached 89.3% of the EAS participants, an increase from 82.5% in 2019. Among radio stations, the government said 88.8% of all participating stations successfully received the alert and 87% were able to successfully retransmit the alert.

Even though EAS was not put through a dry run last year, FEMA did conduct a national test of the WEA system in September. Similar to how broadcast EAS alerts are sent when not relying on the broadcast daisy-chain, Wireless Emergency Alerts are sent by national, state, and local government authorities through FEMA's Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) to participating wireless providers, which then push the alerts to compatible mobile devices in the affected area. Wireless provider participation is voluntary but the FCC says the coverage is “widespread.”

Under FCC rules, participating wireless providers must deliver the alerts to the area specified by the alert originator with no more than a tenth of a mile over-shoot where technically feasible. According to industry estimates, approximately 60% of active smartphones in the U.S. support this “enhanced geotargeting” functionality, with the number to increase as consumers replace their devices with newer models.