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Protest the FCC’s Closed Captioning Decisions
By advocacy | September 22, 2006
Watch ASL Video (An important announcement from NAD, TDI, and other deaf and hard of hearing advocacy groups, presented by Don Lee Hanaumi. The text below is an English translation of the ASL video message.) UPDATE: Editor’s note, the link to the ASL Video has been disabled now.Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appoved almost 300 requests for new TV programs to be shown without closed captions.
Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) appoved almost 300 requests for new TV programs to be shown without closed captions.We must protest these FCC decisions.
We must tell the FCC to support closed captioning.
What Happened?
On September 12, the FCC announced publicly that two TV programs do not need to be closed captioned, forever. This is the first time the FCC approved no closed captions, permanently.
Worse, the FCC said that it is “inclined favorably” (more likely) to approve requests made by TV programs:
- when the TV program is produced by a non-profit organization;
- when the organization receives nothing in exchange for their TV program or when they need to pay to broadcast their TV program;
- when the organization says the cost for closed captioning will result in reducing or stopping their TV program or other important activities.
Deaf and hard of hearing advocacy groups also learned that the FCC received about 550 requests for TV programs to be shown without closed captions. Worse, the FCC approved almost 300 of these requests.
Most of these requests were not put on public notice. Deaf and hard of hearing advocacy groups and consumers had no chance to comment about these requests.
Why is this important?
We want the FCC to stand strong and not weaken the closed captioning rules.
We do not want the FCC to make a new category of TV programs that can be excused from the closed captioning rules.
Without FCC support of closed captioning, hundreds of other TV programs may expect to be excused from the closed captioning rules.
The closed captioning rules have been around for years. They are not new rules. They are not a surprise!
Captioning is not too difficult or too expensive.
It is time for the TV industry and the FCC to wake up and realize WE are important.
Topics: General |
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Are you sure it’s true this time? We’ve seen many hoaxs in the past.