September 27th National EAS Test – What’s Next?

By now, all broadcast stations should have filed their EAS Form One in advance of the scheduled National EAS Test. The date for doing so was August 28, 2017. If stations did not do so by the deadline, they should do so now. Plus, if any information on a station’s EAS Form One changes before the national test, stations should access ETRS and file an update.

The test itself is scheduled for 2:20 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 27^th. By midnight that day, all stations must file EAS Form Two in ETRS, which won’t become available to work on/complete until the test is complete. Following that, stations must file EAS Form Three by November 13, 2017; that form will also become available for filing as soon as the test is complete. Please be sure to review the EAS National Test public notice. The ETRS home page also includes helpful information. As stations are reminded at certain points in the filing process, failure to submit the forms or accurate information can result in enforcement action.

Now for a bit of commentary. We know that the FCC announced in advance by public notice that stations would need to obtain a CORES Username in order to access ETRS and file the EAS forms for the national test. But we must say, the entire process of having to get a username (especially the twisted password limitation and email verification process), associate it to a station’s FRN (with an access/ request email often required), and then access and figure out the new ETRS system, including information that didn’t auto-populate from last year, was – to put it mildly – a monumentally complex and time-consuming process. We could say more, but the better part of prudence suggests to us that some things just shouldn’t be printed.