WIN breach over NCIS captions

WIN Television has been found to have breached captioning rules for two episodes of NCIS broadcast in November 2019.

An investigation by the Australian Communications & Media Authority followed a complaint that the captioning service provided during two episodes was inadequate.

“There was insufficient captioning of 2 episodes of NCIS even after I phoned to notify station, there was no improvement. I was unable to follow storyline at all. This also means that there is no communal enjoyment of television with my family causing a sense of isolation in my own home,” -viewer complaint.

Audio-visual copies of program content are used by the ACMA to determine whether broadcasts comply with industry rules. But when requested for copies of the broadcasts, WIN TV provided low-resolution audio-visual files that were insufficient to ascertain compliance with captioning rules.

A second copy of Episode One was supplied in high resolution ‘burnt-in’ captions, broadcast by Network 10. WIN indicated this was the best indication of what WIN viewers would have seen, but ACMA could not verify the claim.

As a result ACMA could make no ruling on whether WIN had failed to offer adequate captioning.

But it did rule a breach over record keeping under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, a condition of its commercial television broadcasting license.

WIN TV has now made the necessary amendments to its systems to ensure record-keeping obligations are met in future.