FCC fines be damned, ESPN misuses emergency alert tones yet again

It’s the third strike, yet all they get is a slap on the wrist?

Sports broadcasting network ESPN faces a proposed fine for using emergency alert service (EAS) attention sounds without authorization - again, apparently.

The Federal Communications Commission published an order today finding ESPN liable for six instances of broadcasting EAS sounds not to notify the public of an actual emergency, but to advertise its upcoming coverage of the NBA basketball season. 

"Transmitting EAS Tones in the absence of an actual emergency is not a game," FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan A. Egal said in a press release.

According to the FCC, ESPN admitted that it "developed, produced and transmitted" the offending broadcasts between October 20 and 24, 2023, and further admitted that it "[t]ransmitted a portion of the EAS attention signals as part of the promo spot." 

If broadcasting a two-second chunk of the EAS sound wasn't bad enough, ESPN's basketball ads also included "voiceover of a man who states, in an exaggerated, stentorian tone, that 'we interrupt our program to bring you this important message,'" the Commission said. 

"This manner of appropriation of the EAS Tones falls squarely within the type of simulation that the Commission's rules seek to address and prohibit," the FCC said. 

ESPN faces a proposed penalty of $146,976 for the six known broadcasts of the promotion - not much of a drop in the bucket considering ESPN's Q3 operating income was $1.09 billion, but the statutory maximum nonetheless. 

It's the maximum for good reason: This is the third time for the same violation. 

"ESPN has a history of noncompliance with respect to section 11.45 of the Commission's rules," the FCC said in its forfeiture order. The first time, in 2015, ESPN was fined $280,000 for violating the FCC rule and an additional federal regulation when using EAS tones to advertise the film "Olympus Has Fallen," an honor hardly due to the mediocre action flick. ESPN was fined again in 2021 for using the tone as part of a college football documentary, but only $20k in that instance. 

Whether ESPN will learn from its third strike, or whether it will face any other penalties, is unclear, and the FCC didn't answer questions about its future enforcement plans. We reached out to ESPN too, but the network declined to comment. ®