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NBN fails to provide captions. Again. But ACMA slaps them on the wrist. Again.

The hearing-impaired audience is let down again by NBN Newcastle, this time during the Logie Awards. And let down again by ACMA not addressing the problem comprehensively.

Nine’s Newcastle station NBN has failed to provide adequate captions for its hearing impaired audience once again -this time for the Logie Awards.

Providing adequate captions, which is required between 6pm and 10:30pm, has been an ongoing issue for NBN, having previously been found by the Australian Communications and Media Authority to have fallen short of their obligations in September 2008 and October 2009.

Now ACMA has found NBN breached a condition of its broadcasting licence by failing to provide a captioning service for the Logie Awards broadcast on May 1st.

NBN attributes the problem to a system error in their retransmission of caption feeds from TCN9 in Sydney.

ACMA says to prevent further occurrences, NBN has implemented “a visual alarm in the direct eye line of the caption presentation coordinator; and, in consultation with a representative of the deaf community, will, before the end of October 2011, set up a twitter feed to enable real time reporting of captioning errors by NBN presentation staff.”

A Twitter feed? Seriously?

Who is standing up for the hearing impaired audience here? ACMA? Nine? Anybody?

ACMA has previously found NBN failed to provide a captioning service for four broadcasts of NBN Evening News between June 2010 and July 2010. In 2008 NBN said it would replace aged equipment to address caption issues. In 2009 it proposed to install a ‘live’ caption service for its news service.

After another caption slip-up on A Current Affair on Nine in July 2010, Nine voluntarily installed a Captions Auditor to oversee captioning services for both Nine and NBN last March.

At the time ACMA said, “We welcome Nine’s initiative in resolving this matter, however, the ACMA will naturally continue to closely monitor any complaints received about caption delivery in the broadcasting sector.”

But still the captions fall short -while the Auditor was in place.

And still ACMA comes up with disappointing outcomes.

The hearing-impaired audience is only guaranteed captions from 6-10:30pm and only on the primary channels.

Daytime television, multichannels carry no such requirements.

But between ACMA, NBN and a Nine Auditor the problems are still arising.

In the report of its findings, ACMA says, “The ACMA continues to work with industry, consumers and other government bodies to develop an agreed set of indicators for the assessment of caption quality.”

18 Responses

  1. Why exactly does NBN have to provide captions anyway? I know it’s the law – but why is it law? NBN doesn’t want to do captions? Good luck to them – their TV station, their money, their ad revenue.

  2. Joel H,

    You’d be surprised how many DVDs don’t do closed captions/subtitles. I like to use them when I’m watching stuff late-at-night & everybody in my house has gone to sleep.

  3. I think it is more than just 6pm to midnight. They have to do 85% according to this report I found:
    dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/131527/Media-Access-Review-final-report-Amended.pdf

  4. ACMA have no bloody power and this is a pathetic joke. I want some serious action done to networks whom blatantly do this type of thing. I am f***ing over this.

  5. Tim – well you’re the one who came here trying to work out what the National Broadband Network had to do with it – most intelligent people would have figured out it was the TV network 😛

  6. Tim – NBN as a television company has been around since 1962 – it’s not a blow-in like the National Broadband Network. Also the blogs name – TV Tonight – should have been a strong clue 😉

  7. Am a little unclear what course of action ACMA should have taken. I guess a substantial fine is the best option? Realistically, a licence suspension is not going to happen. Any thoughts?

  8. Maybe some census data on how many hearing impaired Australians there are could encourage more to be done. In this day and age it seems quite unfair and peculiar that a significant segment is denied the ability to partake in television.

    Talk about TV networks sending people to DVDs 😛

  9. Time to get rid of ACMA, they are worthless. Seriously they do bugger all. We’ll see a similar article to this in a year or two about Nine’s NRL pokies comments and they’ll get a warning not to do it again.

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