FCC Should Tell Congress Not to Expand Video Description, Say NAB, NCTA, DirecTV
The FCC should tell Congress it would be “premature” to expand requirements for video description for video delivered by TV and the Internet, said NCTA in comments filed in docket 11-43 Wednesday in response to a Media Bureau public notice issued in June (CD June 27 p22). The public notice sought comment on “the status, benefits, and costs of video description on television and Internet-provided video programming” for a July 1 report to Congress required under the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA). Any report to Congress should reflect “the technical and operational issues to be overcome and the costs imposed to achieve carriage of video description in programming delivered via IP,” said DirecTV.
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NAB, NCTA and DirecTV said the commission shouldn’t eliminate exceptions to the video description requirements that allowed companies to leave out video description when the audio stream being used for the video description is being used for other content, such as foreign language audio. The commission in the public notice had asked for comment on whether it should revisit those exceptions. The exception is necessary to “ensure that program diversity is not lost as a result of the conflict between use of the secondary audio channel for video description versus Spanish-language audio,” said NAB. The FCC should report that the exceptions “remain important to cable operators’ and programmers’ ability to serve the needs and interests of multiple constituencies, including not only blind and visually impaired but also Spanish-speaking cable customers,” said NCTA.
The public notice also requested information on how much video description was available to consumers. The Big Four broadcast networks are providing 50 to 88 hours of video description per quarter, mostly “prime time programming geared to general audiences,” said NAB. The video description order requires them to provide at least 50 hours during children’s and primetime programming, NAB said. The costs of providing “every hour of video-described half-hour shows” begin at $3,050 per hour, NAB said. “In some cases, an hour of video-described programming may cost as much as $4,100.” The costs to video-describe an hour of cable programming are “roughly in line with what was anticipated by industry,” NCTA said. On cable, children’s programming targeted to different age groups gets video description on Disney, while USA, TNT and TBS provide the service on a range of adult shows, including The Big Bang Theory and Burn Notice, said NCTA.
NAB, NCTA and DirecTV were also united in opposing an expansion of video description requirements to video delivered over Internet Protocol, a point they also made in the proceeding on emergency video description (CD July 25 p18). DirecTV said expanding emergency description to video on IP would be “a massive undertaking” at the technical level, and all three commenters said Congress had not given the commission authority to apply video description rules to video over IP. Doing so now would also bring the effort into conflict with the effort to implement IP closed captioning, NAB said. “Industry is now focused on compliance with the IP captioning rules, some of which have yet to go into effect,” said NAB. “Many companies are already challenged to meet the current delivery volume and timeline requirements for captioned programs,” said NAB. “The FCC should report to Congress that significant progress is being made in the provision of video description to cable customers and that further legislation in this area would be unnecessary and premature,” said NCTA.