The Digital Revolution Has Made TV More Ubiquitous Than Ever -- Except for Viewers Who Need Captioning

By James Hibberd
Published June 17, 2007 in TVWeek - News
http://www.tvweek.com/news/2007/06/closed_captioning_excluded_dig.php

Colleen Farrell is a 21-year-old college senior who's been shut out ?of television's digital revolution. She wants to watch her favorite shows online. She's up for downloading programs to her iPod.

She would like to watch shows on her brother's high-definition set. There's just one problem: Ms. Farrell is one of 23 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing and must rely on closed captioning.

In the rush to create new products and make television programming available anytime, anywhere, the need for closed captioning is being overlooked. The major broadcast networks have launched state-of-the-art online video players -- that do not include captions. Apple has revolutionized TV viewing by making shows available for download on iTunes -- without captions.

The television industry is spending billions to deliver spectacular high-definition signals -- but viewing captions on HD programming is a Byzantine process that has frustrated many viewers.

"With the move toward hi-def, and the explosive growth in video on the Internet, it's like we're starting all over again," said Mike Kaplan, who serves on the steering committee of the Hearing Loss Association of Los Angeles. "Since 1993, closed captions have been built into every TV set larger than 13 inches. So why in 2007, with the latest and greatest technology at our fingers, is it getting harder and harder to view captions?"

The lack of closed captioning on new media doesn't only close out deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. According to a BBC study, 80 percent of households that use captions are watching the subtitles to learn the language or to follow a program in a noisy place.

With network ratings hitting record lows, the failure to extend closed captioning to the digital world ironically makes TV shows less accessible for some at a time when programming is more widely available than ever.

Although the Federal Communications Commission requires captions for broadcast and cable content, the rules do not cover Internet streaming or digital downloads. That makes extending closed captioning to those media more a matter of corporate responsibility than regulation.

The FCC rules do cover high-definition and video-on-demand delivery, but experts complain that, between companies not complying with regulations and a lack of consumer awareness, many viewers still feel chained to their traditional analog sets.

"The complexity of digital transitioning has made closed captions a ?low priority," said Larry Goldberg, director of the Media Access ?Group at the Boston-based public broadcast station WGBH. Mr. Goldberg should know. He wrote an update to the Federal Communications Commission guidelines in 2000 that expanded closed-captioning rules to include HD broadcasts.

An iTunes spokesman said the service's video offerings don't include closed captioning and refused to comment about "future products or announcements."

Most networks refused to comment about their lack of online captioning beyond brief statements. Fox said they are "actively engaged in exploring ways to leverage the closed-caption data to improve the user experience." The CW said, "We are not doing closed captioning on our streaming and have no plans to do so at this time."

ABC, whose award-winning online player is the most-visited among the network Web sites, said captions are not currently available; the network's spokesperson was "not sure of any future plans." CBS declined to comment.

The sluggish network response might suggest adding captions is technologically difficult or expensive. But experts on both sides of the issue agree that's not the case. Broadcasters have spent millions developing elaborate online games and interactive elements to engage fans, while the price of converting televised caption text for the Web is only about $200 per episode. Once a software system is in place, that cost tends to decrease further.

Perpetually cash-strapped PBS has managed to add captions to many of its shows online. "All the tools exist to do it. It's just a matter of time and money to make it happen," said Tom Apone, who works with Mr. Goldberg at the Media Access Group and helped develop caption software for PBS. "It's pretty straightforward and not terribly expensive."

Cable network sites, including news networks, are also behind the captioning curve. As part of a class project at Gallaudet University, Ms. Farrell surveyed news sites and found that very few provided captions on their stories (CNN.com was an occasional exception).

Among the major broadcasters, only NBC has made a public commitment to add captions. Every episode of every show will be caption-ready when the network's new Web player launches this fall, said Vivi Zigler, executive VP of digital entertainment and new media at the network.

Ms. Zigler was the only network executive contacted by TelevisionWeek who was willing to talk about closed captioning. She said there have been technological hurdles, but agreed the issue has been overlooked. "If we were face-to-face, you'd see me nodding sadly -- it's 100 percent true [a lack of awareness is to blame], but it's not a good excuse," she said.

"From a business management standpoint, we crawl, then walk, then run." For high-definition broadcasts, closed captioning raises tricky technological problems.

Traditional analog broadcasts have captions embedded in the signal that are decoded by the TV set. But HD captions are part of a separate data stream decoded by a set-top box (unless they are viewed with an over-the-air antenna). To view the captions, every piece of hardware and every relay service must be compatible and in sync.

"From a deaf and hard-of-hearing consumer's point of view, this is a big problem," said Sheila Conlon-Mentkowski, a representative for the National Association of the Deaf.