The FCC dismissed on 9/22/2022 the Non-commercial Educational (NCE) FM station application by Community Public Radio, Inc. for a station on Parsa Peak in Lakeside with the city of license of “La Jolla” on 91.7 (La Jolla is a community within the City of San Diego). The facility would have been co-channel with XHGLX-FM Tijuana (which is not listed in FCC databases, but the FCC has reserved as a Mexican allotment for Tijuana). The FCC also named an allotment for adjacent channel 91.9 MHz in Rosarito, BCN, Mexico, and third-adjacent XETRA-FM 91.1 Tijuana as reasons for the dismissal.
Local EAS Info Has Moved
San Diego broadcasters should now get local EAS information from the SBE Chapter 36 EAS page. The site contains EAS resource links and an RMT schedule.
Oscar Medina is retiring from the position of Local Emergency Committee Committee (LECC) Chair and Gary Stigall volunteered to take it, tackling the San Diego EAS plan 2022 revision.
Gary will work with the Vice-Chair of the California State Emergency Coordination Committee (SECC), Richard Rudman, to revise the 2013 San Diego County plan. That plan will be posted when complete.
The EAS broadcast information email distribution will continue from the same MailChimp source, using the same subscriber list. No need to re-apply
It was in August 1999 that local EAS LECC Chair Jeff Williams left for Santa Barbara and passed the position to Oscar Medina, who at that time was Chief Engineer at KNSD (TV). Oscar has maintained a website and helped revise the local EAS plan.
EAS IPAWS Security Advisory
[FROM FEMA Advisory published 8/1/2022]
We recently became aware of certain vulnerabilities in EAS encoder/decoder devices that, if not updated to most recent software versions, could allow an actor to issue EAS alerts over the host infrastructure (TV, radio, cable network).
This exploit was successfully demonstrated by Ken Pyle, a security researcher at CYBIR.com, and may be presented as a proof of concept at the upcoming DEFCON 2022 conference in Las Vegas, August 11-14.
In short, the vulnerability is public knowledge and will be demonstrated to a large audience in the coming weeks.
FEMA strongly encourages EAS participants to ensure that:
- EAS devices and supporting systems are up to date with the most recent software versions and security patches;
- EAS devices are protected by a firewall;
- EAS devices and supporting systems are monitored and audit logs are regularly reviewed looking for unauthorized access.
Bob Vaillancourt to Retire
KGTV Director of Operations and Engineering, Robert Vaillancourt, says he’s retiring in September from Scripps Media after a 42-1/2 year technical career. He’s been at channel 10 since April of 2014 when he returned to San Diego after spending almost seven years as Director of Operations and Engineering at KHON Fox 2 in Honolulu. Before 2007, he had been the Engineering Manager at KNSD San Diego.
KVSD-LD Selling…Again
The D’Amico Brothers Broadcasting Corp. of Fallbrook filed an application with the FCC to transfer ownership of KVSD-LD, channel 35 on Mt. Woodson. Their purchase agreement mentions a sale price of $1.3-million to Word of God Fellowship of Georgia, parent of the Daystar Television Network.
KVSD-LD, which is currently off-the-air, normally transmits a 15 kW ERP signal beamed southwest toward metro San Diego. KVSD-LD had originally broadcast on channel 26 until it was displaced by KSWB in 2017.
A previous application to transfer ownership to Sovryn Holdings filed in October 2021 was not consummated.