Weather Channel Provides "Full-Time" Captioning

Editor: Beginning this month, the Weather Channel is providing captioning 20 hours a day. As far as I know, they are the first cable station with a captioning schedule that meets the captioning requirements for the year 2006. Here are portions of their press release:

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The Weather Channel (TWC) announced that beginning January 2001, the network will double the hours that viewers can receive closed captioning, expanding the service from 10 to 20 hours of programming a day. This makes TWC the first cable network to offer such comprehensive closed captioning. The new hours for the service will be from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. (Eastern Time).

"We're fully committed to providing the more than 28 million Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing ready access to the reliable, expert weather information that consumers have come to expect from The Weather Channel," said Decker Anstrom, the company's president and CEO. "We deliver information that helps people prepare for and understand the weather and how it affects their lives, and we're delighted to now offer closed captioning of that information, along with our high quality maps and graphics around the clock."

"This action by The Weather Channel will bring it into compliance with our captioning rules several years ahead of schedule," said William E. Kennard, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. "We applaud The Weather Channel for its extraordinary efforts to make its programming accessible to the disability community."

The procedure to create closed captioning for programming on The Weather Channel is very labor intensive and requires particular attention to detail. Because the TWC on-camera meteorologists are so well-versed and knowledgeable about weather, and because of the extremely changeable nature of weather systems, the presenters "ad-lib" most of their presentation rather than reading from a script. This means the closed captioning must be done "live" by operators at the National Captioning Institute (NCI) tuned into TWC, who simultaneously key in the words as they are spoken. These are instantaneously transmitted with TWC's satellite feed and decoded by television sets equipped for closed captioning.

The words appear on the viewers' screen as two lines of text just above updates from local weather sensors available to all viewers through special technology exclusive to TWC. The closed captioning format was carefully planned to minimize infringement on the weather maps and graphics that are essential to TWC's overall television picture.

The Weather Channel and the National Captioning Institute entered into their first contract in January of 2000, for five hours a day of captioning. This was later expanded to 10 hours per day in June 2000. Currently, only the hours between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. (Eastern Time) are not captioned. Local forecasts will not be closed captioned because they already exist in a reader-friendly text and graphic presentation.

"We are very pleased to be expanding our work with The Weather Channel," said Jack Gates, executive vice president and COO of the National Captioning Institute. "Providing full access to weather information and vital storm coverage for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers has always been a priority for NCI. The Weather Channel should be commended for making its excellent Weather coverage accessible to the captioned television audience."