Working with $scope.$emit , $scope.$broadcast and $scope.$on

First of all, parent-child scope relation does matter. You have two possibilities to emit some event:

• $broadcast -- dispatches the event downwards to all child scopes,
• $emit -- dispatches the event upwards through the scope hierarchy.

1. If scope of firstCtrl is parent of the secondCtrl scope, your code should work by replacing $emit by $broadcast in firstCtrl:

   function firstCtrl($scope)
   {
       $scope.$broadcast('someEvent', [1,2,3]);
   }
   
   function secondCtrl($scope)
   {
       $scope.$on('someEvent', function(event, mass) { console.log(mass); });
   }

2. In case there is no parent-child relation between your scopes you can inject $rootScope into the controller and broadcast the event to all child scopes (i.e. also secondCtrl).

   function firstCtrl($rootScope)
   {
       $rootScope.$broadcast('someEvent', [1,2,3]);
   }

3. Finally, when you need to dispatch the event from child controller to scopes upwards you can use $scope.$emit. If scope of firstCtrl is parent of the secondCtrl scope:

   function firstCtrl($scope)
   {
       $scope.$on('someEvent', function(event, data) { console.log(data); });
   }
   
   function secondCtrl($scope)
   {
       $scope.$emit('someEvent', [1,2,3]);
   }

4. Use $rootScope.$emit rather than $rootScope.$broadcast regardless of the relationship between trasmitting and receiving controller. That way, the event remains within the set of $rootScope.$$listeners whereas with $rootScope.$broadcast the event propagates to all children scopes, most of which will probably not be listeners of that event anyway. And of course in the receiving controller's end you just use $rootScope.$on.