Broadcasters, Cable Don't Want New FCC TV Captioning Rules

Editor: We normally think of cable companies and broadcasters as being competitors, and they generally are! But they find themselves on the same side of the issue of providing standards for television closed captions. They don't want them!

Thanks to NVRC News for this article!

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This article by Jonathan Make appeared in Communications Daily on November 15, 2005.

Broadcasters and cable, battling on a variety of fronts, agree on at least one issue: The FCC shouldn't expand closed captioning requirements. In comments to the Commission, MPAA, NAB, NCTA, RTNDA and other groups said imposing standards such as technical benchmarks on captions would be an unnecessary burden, fixing a non-existent problem. Groups representing hard-of-hearing consumers and captioning firms are seeking some standards and better monitoring of caption quality.

One issue for broadcasters is money -- with the threat that programming could suffer if captioning costs surge. NAB said requiring stations outside the top 25 U.S. markets to caption unscripted programming would significantly boost costs as TV news profitability is shrinking. Real-time captioning costs $100-$500 an hour, and independent stations are likely to pay more than group-owned ones, said NAB. If the costs associated with producing news and other locally produced programming is unprofitable, the net result will be an eventual decline in such service, said NAB's FCC filing. Far more stations, particularly in smaller markets, will find that the costs of captioning are overly burdensome and, as a result, will seek waivers or be forced to reduce the amount of local news programs. The comments, filed late Thurs., came after stations said they can't afford live captioning due to the high cost relative to ad revenues (CD Nov 14 p6). Earlier this year, the FCC began a review of captioning rules and their success in ensuring access to programming. On Jan. 1, all non-exempt new programming must be captioned (CD July 15 p9).

Cable also fears costs. NCTA opposed any caption quality rules, urged by the National Court Reporters Assn. (NCRA), Telecom for the Deaf (TDI) and others. While doing little to prevent these types of errors, adopting the FCC's proposed rules would do much to increase captioning costs, said NCTA. TDI wants a way to monitor what it calls non-technical quality standards, such as caption accuracy, and technical rules for cases such as when a program doesn't carry captions that it's supposed to. Efforts to fight quality measurements are a way to save money, said one media critic. Media Access Project Exec. Dir. Andrew Schwartzman cited new management and increasing bottom line pressure from Wall Street for broadcaster industry pushback: Historically they've accepted these things as part of being a public trustee, and increasingly they are fighting these public responsibilities.

Considering that there are nearly 400 cable networks, most of which provide captioned material, the costs of monitoring those thousands of hours of programming a week would be enormous, NCTA said. This use of cable network resources for monitoring spelling and grammar errors would increase the costs and burdens of captioning, perhaps leading to a reduction in the network's overall captioning efforts.

Some groups that oppose expanding captioning rules say today's captioning has limits. A widely used method can only caption scripted dialogue, RTNDA said. Admittedly, ENT [Electronic Newsroom Technique] can only be used to convert the dialogue included on a teleprompter script into captions, said the news directors group. As many live newscasts use interviews, field reports and late-breaking weather and sports that cannot be scripted or presented in technical or graphical form, persons with hearing disabilities sometimes do not have full access to local news programming. NCTA said the FCC shouldn't restrict use of ENT, because of limited budgets at local cable news operations. Prices for real-time captioning - which can't use ENT - haven't declined significantly, if at all, said NCTA. Officials at Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, a frequent filer in FCC matters, had no comment.