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SKY News to introduce live captions

SKY News will begin to introduce live captioning for hearing impaired viewers from October.

SKY News will introduce live captioning from Friday October 1st, delivered by Ai-Media.

It will begin captioning 7 days a week on the SKY News National channel (Channel 601) on a programming block led by PM Agenda. SKY News National channel 601 will be captioned every day from 4:00 – 5:00pm AEST.

In coming months captioning will be extended to the SKY News Business channel (Channel 602).

SKY News Chief Executive Officer, Angelos Frangopoulos, said: “This is the beginning of dedicated captioning services on SKY News and we will expand the service over time. We are delighted to be able to increase access for the deaf and hearing impaired. The SKY News Multiview split screen service already carries video and text story options 24 hours a day across all news genres.

PM Agenda is our key political program and we believe it’s the ideal way to start dedicated captioning on SKY News. We have already worked successfully with Ai-Media to provide captioning for the Federal Election Day 2010 and look forward to expanding that relationship.”

9 Responses

  1. Freddy

    actually only the Main channels are captioned from 6-10pm.

    They actualyl asked for and got an discrimination exemption for the digital channels meaning we missed out on the so called freeview channels.

    Ch 7’s 7two is improving but CH 9’s go! has been very discriminating. Any shows or movies that previosuly had captions are not shown – Seinfield and the Nanny comes to mind.

    CHanel Ten’s ONE does not have any captions at all.

  2. Considering Sky news interactive is currently headlining a story about Osama bin laden as “Obama” I wonder what standard there would be. If you can’t get the actual news right what hope for captioning on-the-go. But i guess every little bit helps and the rest of us don’t have to put up with blaring TVs at home.

  3. big deal… at the “real” channels have had mandated captioning between 6pm and 11pm for years…. This is same mob that tooted their horn for going to 16×9 8 years after everyone else… 8 years….

  4. Doesn’t ABC News 24 already have full and live captioning for the vast majority of the day? I’m watching a bulletin now at 11pm EST and am receiving live captions… Sky’s announcement hardly seems earth-shattering.

  5. This is a very welcome development: not only for hearing-impaired viewers, but for every viewer left bewildered and in the dark by the Sky News audio department failing to open the right microphone during Sky’s Election coverage.
    If ABC News 24 follows their lead with live captions, we might even have some idea of what’s going on when Ali Moore throws to poor old Jeremy Fernandez, who is left goldfishing the news headlines thanks to similar incompetence/cost saving.

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