FCC fines ESPN, Viacom $1.4 million for co-opting emergency alerts to promote a movie

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The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday fined ESPN and Viacom $1.4 million for improperly using emergency alert tones in televised ads for the movie Olympus Has Fallen.

In 2013, the networks aired promos for the thriller, which depicts a terror attack on Washington, D.C., that broadcast the proprietary warning tones and thus denigrated the "integrity of the system," the FCC said. The agency imposed fines of $280,000 against ESPN and $1.12 million against Viacom. NBC Universal, which also aired the ads, agreed to a $530,000 fine last year.

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"Our action here sends a strong signal that use of the EAS tones for non-emergency purposes presents a danger to public safety which we will not tolerate," Travis LeBlanc, head of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, said in a statement.