FCC Fines ESPN for False EAS Alerts
Posted on October 30th, 2024 by adminOn October 17, 2024, the FCC announced that ESPN must pay a nearly $150,000 fine for including an EAS alert tone in commercials promoting the start of the NBA season a year ago.
The use of an actual or simulated EAS alert tone is prohibited in the absence of an actual emergency. On numerous previous occasions, the FCC has warned that the use of simulated or actual EAS tones for non-authorized purposes—such as commercial or entertainment purposes—can lead to “alert fatigue,” causing the public to become desensitized to the alerts, or questioning or simply disregarding whether a particular alert is intended to warn about a real, imminent threat or some other cause. In addition, the misuse of simulated or actual EAS codes can result in false activations of the EAS that can spread false information or lock out legitimate activations of the EAS, threatening public safety.
Complaints to the FCC about the ESPN false EAS alerts prompted a formal FCC inquiry. In responding to the inquiry, ESPN admitted that a “brief, less than two second excerpt of the EAS Attention Signals, immediately followed by a . . . voiceover of a man who states, in an exaggerated, stentorian tone, that ‘we interrupt our program to bring you this important message,” had been transmitted a total of six times during a four-day period on two ESPN-owned networks. While ESPN admitted that “some members of the production team may have discussed the presence of the excerpt of the EAS Attention Signals in the Promo Spot, they did not comprehend that its use was prohibited, and that it was revisiting processes and reeducating personnel on the rules.
Interestingly, while the FCC did fine ESPN for six separate violations and included upward adjustments due to prior violations of the same rule and the number of people in the audience, it did not point to ESPN’s failure to self-report the violations, which is also a requirement under the FCC’s rules.