
“Right now in most television environments, we send out a flood warning, and it doesn’t affect about 95% of the people that get it.
#AWEERASER 3.0 TRIAL TV#
The support for location services in NextGen TV will also play an important part in preventing viewers from being bombarded with alerts. Consumers not only will be able to select the types of alerts, such as tornado warning or flash flood warning, they wish to see but also the level of warnings they wish to see-warning versus watch, for instance. Sinclair has begun working with the designers of smart TVs to help them guide consumers through a menu of available warnings as they set up their NextGen TVs.

“We want to make sure that in a sense we are almost partnering with them and not necessarily disrupting their lives,” he said. “So many alerts come across the producer’s desk every day,” said Michaelsen, “but we want to back up because ultimately this is really about the user-the person sitting at home or the person using their mobile device.” Michaelsen envisions taking the work that is already being done and allowing users to drag and drop it onto a platform that supports advanced emergency alerting.Ībove all, Michaelsen said advanced emergency alerting must put viewers first, giving them the ability to limit alerts to those that are of interest. The goal for the workflow is to not add significantly to the existing workload of producers and reporters.

“We want the system to interact with current systems in our newsrooms … because not every single newsroom works on the Avid iNews system, not every newsroom edits with the same platform,” he said. Michaelsen discussed the efforts of Sinclair to develop a next-gen emergency alerting workflow. Other speakers included John Lawson, president of Convergence Services and executive director of the AWARN Alliance, Madeleine Noland, president of ATSC, and Jim DeChant, vice president of Technology at News-Press & Gazette. Michaelsen made his presentation during “NextGen TV 201: Advanced Emergency Alerting, News and Information,” a webinar presented by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) in partnership with the Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance.
#AWEERASER 3.0 TRIAL TRIAL#
The last two weeks of the trial will see the addition of rich media, including maps and video, he said. They will consist of text and limited media. The third two-week block will include daily scheduled and real alerts during the four time periods.
