The FCC shouldn’t adopt specific numeric standards
The FCC shouldn’t adopt specific numeric standards to measure the quality of closed captions or impose fines for substandard ones, said officials from CBS and the NAB in a meeting with FCC staff Tuesday, according to an ex parte letter…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/12qxVPM). The broadcasters argued that “defining a common metric for quality (including technical and non-technical standards) raises significant challenges,” said the filing. Broadcasters have a limited pool of sources to provide captions, and sometimes have to depend on program producers to provide captions for their content. “Inherent in this process is an unavoidable truth that in captioning both live and recorded programming, both human error and transmission delays will preclude perfect captions,” said NAB and CBS. The FCC should also continue to allow smaller broadcasters to use Electronic Newsroom Technique (ENT) to provide captions, the broadcasters said. “Extending the prohibition beyond the top 25 markets could likely result, both on cost considerations and the continued challenges associated with securing real-time captioners, a loss of news coverage,” said the filing.