Pai and Clyburn Inspect Irma Damage, TV Viewing Rose as Harvey Approached
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and Commissioner Mignon Clyburn visited Florida Monday to inspect damage from Hurricane Irma. The trip included a meeting with Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center staff and visits to communication facilities affected by the storm. “Lessons learned from…
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#Irma will help improve the #reliability and #resiliency of our nation's communications networks,” Clyburn tweeted. Pai will visit 911 call centers in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas later in the week “to discuss the importance of connectivity for public safety services in rural America and ways to bridge the digital divide,” a media advisory said. TV viewership in Texas homes unaffected by Tropical Storm Harvey rose Aug. 27 as it approached the coast and flooding began, comScore reported. “This difference was most pronounced in the morning and early afternoon hours, but continued to be evident throughout the entire day." The combined total-day average audience for Houston’s ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox affiliates was more than 537,000 households during Harvey, comScore said, a 140 percent increase over the previous week. In Beaumont, major TV stations had an average audience “double that of the relevant cable channels across the entire broadcast day,” the company said. Four Florida public safety answering points are still down due to Irma, same as Sunday, said Monday’s Disaster Information Reporting System release. Two PSAPs are still experiencing difficulties in the U.S. Virgin Islands, also unchanged. In Florida, 3 percent of cellsites are down, an improvement from 4 percent. In the USVI, 54 percent of cellsites are out of service, an increase from 50 percent. Florida has at least 893,409 wireline and cable subscribers without service, an improvement from 1.1 million. “Large numbers” of consumers are without cable or wireline service in the USVI due to widespread power outages, the report said. Florida has five TV stations out, the USVI have two down, same as Sunday. Twenty-seven radio stations are out of service in Florida and the USVI.