[Federal Register Volume 75, Number 89 (Monday, May 10, 2010)]
[Notices]
[Page 25842]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2010-10923]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
National Telecommunications and Information Administration
[Docket No. 100504211-0211-01]
Notice of a Grant With the Public Broadcasting Service
AGENCY: National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
U.S. Department of Commerce.
ACTION: Notice of a grant to the Public Broadcasting Service.
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SUMMARY: The National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA) announces its intent to award a grant to the Public Broadcasting
Service (PBS), a private, nonprofit corporation whose members are
America's public television stations. The PBS mission is to acquire and
distribute quality children's, cultural, educational, history, nature,
news, public affairs and science television programming and related
services to 356 noncommercial stations serving all 50 states and the
U.S. territories through a satellite interconnection system. This grant
will support development of the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS),
a national system to distribute emergency alert messages to the
American public via commercial mobile service (CMS) devices (e.g.,
cellular telephones).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: William Cooperman, Director, Public
Broadcasting Division, telephone: (202) 482-5802; Fax: (202) 482-2156;
e-mail: [email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Statutory Authority: Section 3010 of the Deficit Reduction Act of
2005, Public Law 109-171, 120 Stat. 4, 26-27 (Feb. 8, 2006)
(establishing the National Alert and Tsunami Warning Program); Section
606 of the SAFE Port Act, Public Law 109-347, 120 Stat. 1884, 1941
(Oct. 13, 2006) (directing NTIA to compensate public television station
licensees or permittees for reasonable costs incurred in complying with
the requirements to support the distribution of geographically targeted
alerts by commercial mobile service providers).
Background
Section 3010 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 directed NTIA to
establish a National Alert and Tsunami Warning Program and provided up
to $156 million during fiscal years 2007 through 2012 from the Digital
Television Transition and Public Safety Act fund to pay for this
effort. NTIA was directed to implement a unified national alert system
capable of alerting the public, on a national, regional, or local basis
to emergency situations by using a variety of communications
technologies.
Congress subsequently enacted the WARN Act, Title VI of the SAFE
Port Act, directing NTIA's expenditure of some of the funds provided
under Section 3010 of the Deficit Reduction Act. The WARN Act set forth
requirements to enable alerting capability for commercial mobile
service providers that voluntarily elect to transmit emergency alerts
as part of a national emergency alerting system. NTIA was directed to
fund certain aspects of those activities in section 606 of the WARN
Act, including compensating public television broadcasters for their
reasonable costs to comply with the requirements imposed by section
602(c) of the WARN Act. Section 602(c) directed the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) to adopt regulations to require public
television broadcasters to install necessary equipment and technologies
on, or as part of, any broadcast television digital signal transmitter
to enable the distribution of geographically targeted alerts by
commercial mobile service providers that have elected to transmit
emergency alerts.
On July 8, 2008, the FCC adopted rules requiring public television
stations to install equipment and technologies to enable them to
distribute geo-targeted emergency alerts to participating CMS
providers. See The Commercial Mobile Alert System, Second Report and
Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Second Report), PS
Dkt. No. 07-087, 23 F.C.C. Rcd. 10765 (July 8, 2008). The Second Report
specified the functionality that must be built at the nation's public
television stations and at a central collector to permit the public
broadcasting system to provide a redundant pathway as one part of a
national alerting system. The Second Report identified five types of
equipment (Geo-targeting Systems, Groomers, Data Receivers, PBS
Equipment, and Back-up Power Equipment) recommended by the Association
of Public Television Stations (APTS) for this purpose. The Second
Report also acknowledged that PBS or a similarly situated entity would
provide the interface feed between the Alert Gateway, the national
emergency message aggregator through which emergency messages would be
disseminated, and the public broadcast television stations.
NTIA received an unsolicited proposal from PBS, which seeks funding
on behalf of all affected public television stations as well as for
elements of CMAS to be performed by PBS. APTS, an organization
representing America's public television stations, has endorsed the
proposal. The PBS proposal included the elements supported by APTS in
its FCC filings and discussed by the FCC in the Second Report. NTIA has
reviewed the PBS proposal pursuant to Department of Commerce policy and
intends to award PBS a non-competitive grant under the authority of the
Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the WARN Act to cover the costs of
equipment necessary for public television stations to install equipment
and systems to comply with the FCC requirements of the Second Report.
PBS is uniquely qualified and best able to administer this award
because it manages the national public television interconnection
system, which will be the redundant pathway used by the public
television stations for this national emergency alerting system; it has
the demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with the public
television stations to implement the project in the limited timeframe
required by the FCC; and its management has the technical skills to
implement and administer the project.
Dated: May 4, 2010.
Bernadette McGuire-Rivera,
Associate Administrator, Office of Telecommunications and Information
Applications.
[FR Doc. 2010-10923 Filed 5-7-10; 8:45 am]
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