Caption compliance results 2017 – 18
Watchdog gives the tick of approval on captions for primary channels.
- Published by David Knox
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- Filed under News
Media watchdog the Australian Communications & Media Authority has logged 2017- 2018 captioning results for Free to Air and Subscription Television, and given them the tick of approval.
Free to Air
Free to Air networks are required to caption their primary channels between 6 am and midnight (except for foreign language and non-vocal music programmes). Multichannels are still exempt from the requirements.
Free-to-air television broadcasters provided approximately 0.6 million hours of captioned programs on their primary services (95 channels in total) between the hours of 6 am and midnight in 2017–18.
Captioned programs made up 99.64 per cent of the total hours of all non-exempt programs broadcast between 6 am and midnight on free-to-air television broadcasters’ primary television channels.
Free-to-air television services’ captioning shortfalls were small against the 100 per cent captioning target, averaging close to four hours per non-compliant service across the entire 2017–18 year. These shortfalls were caused by significant and unforeseen technical or engineering difficulties, as well as human errors.
In November ACMA ruled 10 in breach of failing to meet standards for Have You Been Paying Attention? with the network agreeing to use pre-prepared captions in future.
Subscription TV
The annual captioning targets for subscription television services vary by genre and category. The target for each category generally increases by five per cent each year, until the target reaches 100 per cent. For 2017–18, the captioning targets for subscription television services ranged from 20 per cent (of total broadcast time over the year) for music services to 90 per cent for Category A movie services.
Subscription television services (527 services and 147 unique channels in total) broadcast approximately 2.1 million hours of captioned programs in 2017–18. Two in three (67 per cent) of subscription television services exceeded their captioning targets.
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2 Responses
I use captions to learn grammar and how to spell unfamiliar words, such as place names and items. Captions add another dimension to the programming. Sometimes, I feel sorry for those who are hearing impaired as the captions often contain mistakes and errors. Captioners try their best to rectify errors. They often leave out words I assume they don’t know how to spell too. It seems quite difficult to caption live programs. It would be good to see improvements in captioning as it is a vital service.
2/3 of STV exceeded captioning requirements while FTA continues to actively not caption multichannel content. Such a shame that you have to pay for accessibility. And don’t even get me started on no one other than Netflix offering audio description in this country. But let me focus on the positive – very well done to Foxtel, thank you for your outstanding service. And well done to Netflix, Stan etc who aren’t counted and offer a large amount of closed captioning.