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ACMA: Public submissions on TV Captioning

If you watch TV with captions then this review wants to hear from you.

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2016-06-08_1310

Media watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority has begun a review of the captioning rules for broadcasters and calling for public submissions to a consultation paper.

The captioning rules for television broadcasters are set out in the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (BSA) and include:

targets for the amount of programming that must be captioned
reporting and record-keeping requirements
exemptions from captioning requirements
requirements about quality set out in the Captioning Standard.
The BSA also requires the ACMA to conduct the review before 31 December 2016 and to provide a report to the Minister before 30 June 2017.

Free-to-air television broadcasters are required to caption:

  • 100 per cent of programs broadcast between 6 am and midnight on their primary channels
  • all news and current affairs programs broadcast at any time on their primary channels.

Subscription television licensees are gradually moving towards a requirement to caption 100% of programs in a 24 hour period.

‘The captioning of Australian television broadcasts is essential for many Australians, and the ACMA encourages all interested parties to make a submission to the review,’ said ACMA acting Chairman Richard Bean.

Submissions are due COB Friday 22 July 2016.

Captioning obligations.

9 Responses

  1. Yep…just because one has hearing issues…they should still be able to watch everything everyone else does….not just selected programs….decided by someone else as appropriate.

  2. Reading those captioning obligations, I’m now curious if The Late Show With Stephen Colbert has fallen into the “all news and current affairs programs broadcast at any time on their primary channels” category. Letterman never got captioned (until the final days), but Colbert gets (albeit live) captioned, even well after midnight.

    Not that I’m complaining–there should be more of it. Programs like The Feed & Full Frontal over on SBS2 are missing out on potential viewers here due to the lack of captions.

  3. I think it should be mandatory for closed captions to be available if the program was originally broadcast with closed captions. eg. all US and UK programs are broadcast with captions, so the Australian networks should be compelled to have those captions available here.

    1. I’ve heard people in the UK complain that their captions for Neighbours have often been incorrect because the captioners have misunderstood something Australian, but they have been correct when they screened in Australia. Why don’t the captions come with the programs?

      1. I assume (which is a dangerous thing to do) that in Australia TEN pays for the captioning. Fremantle, or the program’s distributor supplies it to the world without captioning, so the UK network has to pay locally, or do it themselves, if they want captions. Or, one would assume, they could buy the captions from TEN, not from Fremantle.

      2. My guess is Fremantle Australia deliver Neighbours to Network Ten in Australia. Network Ten then either create the captions themselves or subcontract someone else to create them.

        Network Ten don’t distribute the programme around the world – Fremantle do. But they don’t own the captions to package with the programme.

        There’s other reasons why you might not bother including captions even if you could:
        – software used varies around the world and is often incompatible
        – different countries have different standards around words per minute in the captions (you can’t read words as fast as you can listen to words), so the degree to which speech must be edited for captions varies.
        – also in the UK they also use a variety of colours of captioning to differentiate between charactors

        Some broadcasters would also format their captions to avoid covering up their channel logo too. Sad…

      3. I’ve always found this puzzling that each country did its own captioning. Surely in this digital age it would be a simple task to transcribe the script or spoken word into captions. Seems like a lot of double and triple dipping going on and often not correctly.

        I use CC because my hearing is not the best and a lot of TV shows seem to employ mumbling actors. When combined with the over the top music / advertising interludes, you are forever lowering or raising the volume. CC allow you to watch a show at a reasonable volume and follow hard to decipher spoken words.

        1. Agree. What’s so hard since there are many workable speech-to-text programs. But, please Seven, we don’t need subtitles of the raucous vocal “music” over the top of dialogue in “Home & Away” and other shows. Difficult enough to follow the dialogue without the added noise, and trying to read the actors’ captions mixed in with inane “music” lyrics captions.

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