CATV Gets a Jump Start on Emergency Planning and Preparation

By Kyler Edsitty

[Concho, OK, September 23, 2025] – Located outside of Oklahoma City, OK, Cheyenne and Arapaho Television (CATV) received Native Public Media’s (NPM) Emergency Management Plan (EMP) training. Station staff and Emergency Responders participated in this training. Through this training, in coordination with Emergency Responders, CATV staff drafted an EMP that enables the station to prepare and respond to various natural and human-made disasters.

CATV’s mission is to preserve the history, language, and culture of the Cheyenne and Arapaho people and to present programming that informs and promotes their mental and physical well-being. CATV can continue to uphold this mission with the newfound ability to prevent and mitigate crises.

Created by NPM in partnership with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the EMP training curriculum is designed for broadcasters to stay on air during emergencies to keep their staff, property, and communities safe and informed. As seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tribal broadcasters were a massive community resource in providing testing and vaccination information. This responsibility as first-informers is strengthened using this EMP training in the wake of other emergencies.

The training provides an initial overview of emergency management strategies that include prevention, mitigation, preparation, risk assessment, response, and recovery from different emergencies. During the training, the station also assesses its abilities to respond to an emergency and creates a work plan to address these limitations.

Throughout the training, the station assessed its physical location and what natural disasters could affect their station’s operations. Located in Oklahoma, CATV had concerns for tornadoes and severe winter storms (e.g., crippling ice storms), as these disasters could strike at any time. By identifying these hazards, they were able to create emergency plans to address each of these storms so they will be better prepared when they strike next. The Tribe and station take the safety of their communities and staff seriously and already keep their staff home in the case of severe weather. Part of this preparation included creating weather PSAs ahead of time and pursuing remote broadcasting technology. This would ensure staff members are safe while still broadcasting vital information.

By the end of the training, CATV had a draft of their EMP that was nearly ready for approval. They also walked away with a stronger relationship with their Tribal Emergency Management Team. The two realized their mutual importance in the event of emergencies. CATV staff felt more confident in their abilities to respond to crises and now have the desire to reinforce themselves as first-informers. The station also showed interest in pursuing other widespread emergency alerting capabilities, like becoming an Alerting Authority under the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS).

CATV Director of Operations Randy Burleson spoke to the effectiveness of the training.

“I am grateful for NPM and their commitment to helping Radio and Television Stations like ours to improve operations, FCC compliance, and safety and emergency management planning,” Burleson stated. “The Emergency Management Planning class was well received by our television station staff and our Emergency Operations personnel. The class was informative and challenged us to think about how we would handle an emergency, which emergencies were likely and how we would disseminate information, and how we could recover. It showed us the importance of having an EMP in place and readily available for immediate reference in a time of need.”

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