The report says a search was initiated "When the helicopter failed to arrive in Iliamna", and the arrival time would have been 3 or 4 minutes after the crash, since the crash site was 6 miles from there. It doesn't say what time the search was initiated, but it may well have been within that time after the crash. What else would the company provide other than archived data? There would be no real-time data available after the crash. I think some people here are jumping far too high and far too fast to rather questionable conclusions.
But FH1100 is right, the requirement for flight following is only that it meet the FAA standards, which are that someone start asking questions 30 minutes after the ETA in the flight plan. Some operators simply use FAA flight plans, without doing any monitoring themselves, and that's legal. Larger operators have dedicated full-time dispatch centers, staffed 24/7, with someone actually monitoring all flights. There is a wide range of methods, and probably all are legal, even those with no monitoring at all, as long as an FAA plan is filed.