Captioners Busy as Broadcasters Cope with New FCC Rules
Caption providers have seen their business grow as a Jan. 1, 2006, deadline nears for non-exempt new programming to be captioned in the top 25 markets. “Our business has naturally been growing by 50% to 75%,” said Jay Feinberg, dir.- mktg. services at the National Captioning Institute. His and other captioning services, such as Vitac and Caption Colorado, have noticed more business as a result of the deadline, executives said.
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But broadcasters said closed captioning rules are burdensome and confusing. In June alone, the FCC denied at least 12 bids for exemption from compliance. Petitioners claimed captioning would be an undue financial burden. Local stations typically pay $100 per hour for closed captioning, Feinberg said.
Earlier this month, the FCC fined 2 Fla. stations $24,000 each for failing to provide hearing-impaired viewers timely and complete emergency information during disaster coverage (CD Aug 10 p6). As Aug. 2004’s Hurricane Charley raged, the stations didn’t provide visual presentation of emergency information, violating Commission rules.
The Fla. Assn. of Bcstrs. (FAB), which criticized the ruling, said it plans to meet with NAB to address those fines and plan further action. “It’s an outrage for stations to be fined for covering a natural disaster, while stations that didn’t provide coverage weren’t fined at all,” said FAB Pres. Patrick Roberts: “It’s time the FCC gets off their ivory tower and deals with the real world.” Roberts saied the FCC isn’t “in the eye of the storm” and fails to understand what the stations did do in their efforts to provide as much information on the hurricane as possible. At one point during the coverage “the windows blew up at one station and they tried to continue to cover the story,” Roberts said.
The stations’ owners, Waterman Bcstg. and Montclair Communications, insisted they did inform hearing impaired viewers with on-screen displays and a crawl along the bottom of the screen. The FCC said that information wasn’t enough. The stations countered they provided “critical” information, such as the need to seek immediate shelter, but not every piece of “useful” information in closed captioning. The stations couldn’t be reached for comment. Roberts said he’s confident they'll appeal the fines. “So they covered 99.9% of the hurricane in closed captioning and they are being fined for the 1%, for such a low population of the hearing impaired in the area,” Roberts said.
One hitch is that real-time captioning has an inherent delay. Typically, broadcasters send caption providers programs they want captioned, such as soap operas or daytime shows. But for emergency coverage, there can be a lag of 15 to 30 min. before captioning begins, Feinberg said. “We are on retainer and have people stationed across the country to begin captioning when disaster strikes, but there is a delay,” Feinberg said.
There’s also confusion over where to take captioning grievances at the FCC, Roberts said. For example, the Consumer & Govt. Affairs Bureau issued the notice of inquiry on captioning and the Enforcement Bureau issued the fines against the Fla. stations. The Media Bureau takes action that involves granting or denying petitions for exemption to closed captioning requirements, an FCC source said.
There are 28 million deaf or hard of hearing people in the U.S., according to the National Assn. of the Deaf, which joined other advocacy groups in petitioning the FCC to improve closed captioning rules and beef up enforcement.
In July the FCC said it would seek comment on its closed captioning rules, especially the need for standards on the technical capability of captioning, such as transcription accuracy. The Commission also said it would ask about the need for more procedures to prevent or remedy technical problems. A notice of inquiry hasn’t been listed in the Federal Register yet, so there’s no indication of when comments and replies are due.