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

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.

One point where industry groups split is who to blame for captioning problems, such as garbled text. Captioning groups, including the National Captioning Institute (NCI), note there are many possible ways for captions to be muddled. NAB said a lot of programming its members air is pre-packaged. NCTA said discussions with its members “in fact, suggest that neither cable programmers nor operators are typically the source of these types of problems.” Captioners said foul ups occur at many locations. Problems at TV stations or cable headends are caused by malfunctioning network gear, said the Accessible Media Industry Coalition, whose members include non-profit NCI and for-profit rivals. “During the delivery process, there are numerous points where the captions could be affected,” said NCI’s filing. “A quality standard adopted by the FCC must take this into account.” - Jonathan Make