What all this seems to boil down to is that Congress mandated that all programming be captioned by a certain point. The federal government, having established this mandate, proceeded to pay a substantial portion of the cost and make exceptions (for things like live sports programming) where it seemed inappropriate to insist on captioning.
But then several lawmakers looking for a "single mother spends welfare check on Doritos" story decided that it was opportune to slam the captioning of entertainment programs (specifically "Baywatch"). The problem being that, given the cost of captioning, no one else wants to pay for captioning. So either broadcasters are going to get relief from the mandate, or they're going to have to eat the cost of the captioning and will therefore provide whatever is the lowest quality acceptable.
But, still, not quite the cut-and-dried censorship issue I had originally thought. More like a "federal agency rewrites regualtions without allowing public comment" issue; bad, but not nearly as bad.
Thanks for making me take a second look, M'ia. :-)
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timeasmymeasure
Re: wait a sec
Date: 2004-02-17 04:39 pm (UTC)Yes, by law all programming must be captioned, at least 95% by 2006. See
http://www.captions.org/factsheet.cfm
http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/ccrules.html
http://www.odc.state.or.us/tadoc/techcp12.htm
Just a sampling of other links I've turned up on the subject:
http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/pr.html
http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/list.html
http://www.afb.org/info_document_view.asp?documentid=716
http://pages.ivillage.com/cl-loluv/id12.html
Older articles on the financial incentives surrounding CCing
http://www.ncaa.org/news/1997/970224/active/3408n02.html
http://gusom.gallaudet.edu/patjohanson/COED/COED%20Chapter%206.htm
What all this seems to boil down to is that Congress mandated that all programming be captioned by a certain point. The federal government, having established this mandate, proceeded to pay a substantial portion of the cost and make exceptions (for things like live sports programming) where it seemed inappropriate to insist on captioning.
But then several lawmakers looking for a "single mother spends welfare check on Doritos" story decided that it was opportune to slam the captioning of entertainment programs (specifically "Baywatch"). The problem being that, given the cost of captioning, no one else wants to pay for captioning. So either broadcasters are going to get relief from the mandate, or they're going to have to eat the cost of the captioning and will therefore provide whatever is the lowest quality acceptable.
But, still, not quite the cut-and-dried censorship issue I had originally thought. More like a "federal agency rewrites regualtions without allowing public comment" issue; bad, but not nearly as bad.
Thanks for making me take a second look, M'ia. :-)