John Lawson, longtime broadcast alerting advocate and founder of the AWARN Alliance, announced that he is transitioning to an alerting start up. Industry veteran Dave Arland has been tapped as the new Executive Director for the coalition of broadcasters, tech companies and trade associations behind the Advanced Warning and Response Network.
Handing over the reins of the AWARN Alliance at year-end caps Lawson’s storied four-decade career in policy, technology and management. He continues as President of Convergence Services Inc., a noted strategic consulting firm focused on spectrum, resilience and next-generation broadcasting business models. The new venture he co-founded, America’s Emergency Network LLC, uses satellite and the ATSC 3.0 core network to interconnect alerting authorities to ATSC 3.0 TV stations.
Arland brings decades of industry experience and expertise in lobbying, communications and strategy to his new role at the AWARN Alliance. He continues to lead his consulting firm, Arland Communications, and serves as Executive Director of the Indiana Broadcasters Association.
“The AWARN Alliance itself is John Lawson’s legacy, and all of us owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Similarly, we are very fortunate to have the well-respected and talented Dave Arland to lead us into the future,” said AWARN Alliance Chairman John I. Taylor.
“I’m proud of the work of the AWARN Alliance to foster the use of ATSC 3.0 for advanced emergency messaging, which creates a powerful use case for NEXTGEN TV,” Lawson said, thanking the AWARN Alliance’s core group of commercial and public broadcasters and technology companies that “grasp the life-saving power of NEXTGEN TV alerting.”
Arland said, “One of the most powerful connections of America’s broadcasters is between viewers and public safety officials, and AWARN will give local TV news teams an enhanced way of keeping people informed and safe. I look forward to working with various stakeholders to help build an advanced alerting system that will take full advantage of the capabilities of ATSC 3.0.”
Long before founding the AWARN Alliance in 2016, Lawson began his work on advanced alerting while he was CEO of America’s Public Television Stations during the 9/11 attacks. Later, he was Executive VP of ION Media Networks and Executive Director of the Mobile500 Alliance. He also has served on the boards of directors of the National Association of Broadcasters and Open Mobile Video Coalition.
Under Lawson’s leadership, the AWARN Alliance was one of the four signatories (along with APTS, CTA and NAB) to the original Joint Petition that led to FCC approval of the ATSC 3.0 transmission standard in 2017. He is credited with bringing together broadcasters and the public safety community to establish the foundation for rich multimedia emergency messaging to complement the current U.S. Emergency Alert System.
Arland’s career is at the intersection of broadcasting and consumer technology policy, marketing and strategic communications. His broad experience includes broadcast journalism and government service. He is former President of the National Alliance of State Broadcasters Associations and was a longtime PBS TV station board member.
Current and former Arland Communications clients include ATSC, the Broadcast Standards Association; the Pearl TV broadcaster business group; and the Consumer Technology Association, among others.
Arland pledged to build on the AWARN Alliance’s impactful vision: to save lives and protect communities by leveraging advanced emergency alerting, news and information powered by ATSC 3.0 NEXTGEN TV.