public comment on televised closed captioning
This is important for anyone who uses closed captioning (or know someone who does - we are a larger group than you might think!): Act Now! Improve Television Closed Captioning
On November 24th, the NAD, along with other consumer groups, submitted comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about closed captioning. The FCC wants updated information about the need for closed captioning technical and non-technical standards, monitoring, reporting, use of the “electronic newsroom technique” or teleprompter scripts for captioning, and applying the $3 million revenue exemption to broadcasters who provide multiple channels of programming. You can tell the FCC what you think about these closed captioning issues until December 9, 2010.
The list of requested improvements are straightforward:
- Closed captioning rules must be changed to require real-time captioning for local news programs nationwide.
- The FCC must establish minimum standards for closed captions.
- Closed captions should be monitored to find and fix problems quickly.
- Closed caption compliance reports should be filed every three months.
- The FCC should establish fines for closed captioning violations.
- Broadcasters with more than $3,000,000 revenue per year must caption the programs on all of their “multicast” channels, not just their main channel.
There’s only a few more days for comments to be sent in, so be sure to make your voice heard!
Originally published at What's that you said?. You can comment here or there.