Leading Local Insights
Leading Local Insights
Grant Funding and Nationwide Alerting for Public TV Stations
BIA welcomes Kevin Ruppenthal, Director of Operations at SpectraRep, and John McCoskey, Chief Operating Officer of SpectraRep to discuss CPB’s Next Generation Warning System Grant Program. This grant presents an important and immediate opportunity for local broadcasters. Year one of the grant is a $40 million program available to public broadcast television and radio stations for funding equipment upgrades with a focus on enhanced alerting and warning capabilities, including ATSC 3.0 for television stations.
Listen now to learn about the grant’s goals, what’s covered and who’s eligible. Kevin and John also explain the three steps to follow immediately to apply by the deadline. More details on applying here.
Hi, my name is Kevin Ruppenthal and I'm the Director of Operations at SpectraRep, which full disclosure is an affiliate of BIA Advisory Services. I've been invited by BIA to discuss an important topic for public broadcasters, so I'm glad to be here and appreciate you listening. A quick intro to SpectraRep our company is the decades-long leader in data casting services for first responders, emergency management and education. Today we're discussing CPB's Next Generation Warning System Grant Program. Year one is a $40 million program available to public broadcasts television and radio stations for funding equipment upgrades with a focus on enhanced alerting and warning capabilities, including ATSC 3.0 for television stations.
Kevin Ruppenthal:CPB has conducted several webinars on this topic and is prioritizing stations that reach underserved communities, especially those in rural or tribal areas. CPB has made it clear that anything that improves station resiliency and delivering those services is qualified for the grant programming and is encouraging stations to quote dream big. With me today on the podcast is my colleague, John McCoskey, Chief Operating Officer of SpectraRep, and he's going to answer several common questions we've been hearing about this grant. Our goal is to help make the application process very easy for our listeners. So, John, I've given an overview of the NGWS grant, but please add a bit more color and explain how SpectraRep is involved.
John McCoskey:Sure, thanks Kevin. As background, SpectraRep has partnered with public television stations on data casting initiatives for more than two decades and literally across the country, so most stations know us from our work in public safety and emergency management and more recently for remote learning during COVID. We're the company that worked with APTS and the California Public Television Stations on delivering earthquake early warning alerts using data casting across the state and since then we've expanded the alert and capability beyond earthquakes to include FEMA all hazards alerts using public television data casting and that capability precisely aligns with the ultimate goals of the NGWS program, which is to reach more of the population with IPAWS alerts.
Kevin Ruppenthal:And John, as you've explained, this grant is providing much needed support for the development of nationwide public alert and warning systems using data casting. Can you briefly explain what is public alerting over data casting and how is it different from EAS?
John McCoskey:Great question, Kevin. EAS delivers alerts to television viewers and radio listeners over their video and audio services and we've all experienced that during regular tests on TV and radio. Those alerts are critical and, to be clear, enhanced EAS equipment is supported by the NGWS grant program. However, those alerts only reach people who have their TV or radio on at the time of the alert. SpectraRep's public alerting system takes alerts directly from FEMA IPAWS and routes them to appropriate public TV transmitters who then broadcast the alerts directly to purpose built receivers in a home office or school really any place that can benefit from receiving an alert. So they're not sending to TVs and radios, they're sending to a specific alerting receiver for that purpose. These alerts are hyper localized to the geographic polygon included an IPAWS alert and, unlike EAS, which is often sent to a whole county or even multiple counties, that may be received by people not actually affected by the alert.
Kevin Ruppenthal:So, John, I'm thinking some of our listeners will probably be hearing about this system for the first time, so can you touch on our that there have been proven demonstrations of public alerting using data casting?
John McCoskey:Yeah, another great question Kevin. So the California example that I said earlier is probably the best one because it's been around for quite a while and it's really a good demonstration of data casting. So public television is the fastest mechanism to deliver earthquake early warning alerts by far much faster than any other mechanism, and currently 11 public television stations in California can reach approximately 35 million people nearly simultaneously in a second or less. So think about that being able to reach that size population, that size geography with an alert at all at the same time. Perfect for us. Great early warning.
John McCoskey:And probably the second and most interesting capability is the same system can deliver alerts to enterprise systems located to drive automated actions instead of alerting individuals. So that might be automatically opening the doors of the firehouse before they were jammed due to earthquake shaking, or closing a gas valve, opening a gate really anything that needs to happen automatically when the area is going to be affected by an incident. The enterprise alerting receivers can do that Through the good work of APTS and the California stations. The efforts there have been funded by the state since 2017. So it's a program that's got some good history and good success.
Kevin Ruppenthal:Yes, this, this grant really is a tremendous opportunity for stations to fund equipment purchases, installation and training, all with the goal of improving their station resilience and security and improving the transmission of emergency alerts and warnings to their local communities as well. So, John, please tell our listeners what has SpectraR ep prepared to help with the application process?
John McCoskey:Well, first of all, we've lived in the grants world for decades. We understand how they work and how to best apply. We have what we think is a small equipment package that will equip stations for public alerting that's fully aligned with the NGWS program and will actually help applicants, because it's tied to the primary goal of advanced warning. And if a station wants to add the package to their grant application, they can literally download, cut and paste into each of the grant forms and, frankly, be done. We set up a web page that has all of those elements and instructions on how to use them at www. spectrarep. com. You can find everything you need there and we're also happy to be an extra set of eyes on a grant application if that would be useful, since we think we have a very deep understanding of the program and its goals.
Kevin Ruppenthal:John, thank you very much. This is so helpful and I reiterate that we invite people to visit our grant resource page at www. spectrarep. com and click the resources link in the navigation area. That page contains all the instructions on how to apply for the grant and if anyone has further questions on how to apply using SpectraRep data casting and public alerting, feel free to contact us at info at www. spectrarep. com for help. We are really excited about this grant and the real possibility it opens up for a nationwide alerting and warning system across the United States using advanced broadcasting. Thank you for listening.