The FCC should take steps to improve competition...
The FCC should take steps to improve competition in the closed-captioning industry, Media Captioning Services (MCS) told Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and FCC staff in a meeting last week, according to an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/16kmAs0). The company said large programmers…
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are “preferencing a few dominant closed captioning firms,” which is squeezing out the smaller companies that MCS says are the bulk of their industry. The company said this leads to decreased funding for schools that train captioners and court reporters. MCS blamed the large programmers’ “anticompetitive” business practices for steadily declining compensation for captioning, “despite the FCC requirement for video programmers to provide increasing levels of captioning.” MCS said the decline in pay combined with the decreasing availability of training has led to parents “disincenting” their children from entering the closed captioning business. During the meeting with Clyburn, “the ability of the closed captioning industry to meet real time captioning requirements at quality levels needed by Deaf and hard of hearing viewers, including the ability to meet peak demands at times of national and regional emergencies, was noted as a significant risk in the near future,” said the ex parte. MCS asked the FCC to study how often video programmers are using smaller captioning companies and to consider that use when broadcast licenses come up for renewal.