Closed Captioning is Now required by ALL TV Statioons

[Bill Sergio]

We air almost ecxclusively on 900 broadcast stations and about 400 stations emaled us that they will no longer accept any infomercial or spot (2 minutes or less) or any type of programming without Closed Captioning because the FCC starting fining stations $40,000 for each show without it.

I read the regs and the law went into effect last January for BROADCAST stations and it is now being enforced. It clearly applies to broadcast stations and I can’t tell from reading the regs if it also applies to cable.

The Infomercial King

[Norm Wright]

Found this list of exemptions at https://www.captions.org/factsheet.cfm

There are some exemptions to the above captioning rules (for both English and Spanish language programming). For example, captioning is not required for:

Programs which are shown between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. local time;

Locally produced and distributed non-news programming with no repeat value (e.g., parades and school sports);

Commercials that are no more than five minutes long;

Instructional programming that is locally produced by public television stations for use in grades K-12 and post secondary schools (only covers programming narrowly distributed to individual educational institutions);

Programs in languages other than English or Spanish;

Programs shown on new networks for the first four years of the network’s operations;

Public service announcements under 10 minutes, unless they are federally-funded or produced; and

Video programming providers with annual gross revenues under $3 million (although such programmers must pass through video programming that has already been captioned).

In addition, a video programming provider or distributor may ask the FCC for an exemption for specific programming if supplying captions for that programming would result in an undue burden for the provider or distributor.

[Bill Sergio]

Hi,

I can tell that you don’t buy TV time. The REAKL WORLD works like this:

1) All the exemptions you mention are NOT automatic and require that you make an application to the FCC and our attorney says that he can count on one hand the number of exemptions granted and the process takes from months to over 1 year.

2) The TV station say they want it Closed Captioned or it doesn’t air and they don’t care what you say! This is the real world….

Also, every infomercial that is airing will always gross over $15 milion a year MINIMUM and many of my infomercials have grossed over $160 million in the first 6 months. Infomercials are a big business.

I think Close Captioning should be required but I think it should be a system other than the on eimplemented which places a financial and time burden on everyone.

The Infomercial King

[Bill Sergio]

By the way, 85% of what airs in infomercial time are NOT infomercials but NON-infomercial entertainment shows.

Also, most of our infomercial do NOT air late night. The biulk of the TV time we buy is Mon thru Fri afternoons and weekends DAYTIME.

I appreciate your posting what you did, please don’t take my commments the wrong way.

When a large group of broadcast TV stations decide to insist on Captioning then we don’t fight it.

One last comment, while it is true that any successful infomercial will ALWAYS gross over $15 million in the first 6 months of airing it, our profit margins are very tight.

I thought about it, and I feel that I have a responsibility to add the close captioning myself—I had never thought about it before. My gripe is with the few companies that are charging so much money for software and hardware–$5,000 and up!

As I said, I am writinga program right now to add line 21 captioning and I invite any other programmers out there to work with me and we will sell the software for under $50.

APPLE COMPUTER says that they want to make software and hardware to help the handicap? Right? Well let them put their money where there mouth is–they could easily publish the source code that would allow anyone to add line 21 closed captioning–I bet they already have at least 50 programmers who could write it in less than an hour–so why doesn’t Apple publish this code?

The Infomercial King

[Andrew Mehta]

Good luck with the programme mate.

Hey – it’s for me and you, gotta do it, so we can circulate…

I don’t produce for broadcast atm, but I do work on a shoe string, so appreciate the coding effort. Will also be interesting to see if the capability appears in future installments of editing software, although I see you’ve already criticised some of the current software efforts.

I should also point out I’m not entirely sure what closed captioning is.
Although I’ll probably look it up on Wikipedia in due course.
In part of my DVD production, there’s an interview with a Japanese guide, that I had to subtitle, but I just used Boris FX for that.

Someone else here wrote about using After Effects for CC. That’s cool, as I have that. So atm I’m blissfully ignorant, but hopefully if I ever need to know about CC, I’ll either already have capable software, or else may be able to benefit from the community’s code.

[Ernie Santella]

Ajmetz,

You confusing Close-Captioning with subtitling. Subtitles are always on the screen for translation (For example, a french soundtrack for the US market would have the works in English on the screen all the time)

Close-Captioning is for example, an English soundtrack with English words appearing on the screen for Deaf people, but only if you active the Close-Captioning feature on your TV. This is encoded in the video on line 21 of the signal and not burned into the picture full-time like subtitles.
—————

Come on guys, there has to be some computer geek out there that can write this code for a plug-in that he could sell for say $200! It doesn’t have to be fancy with scrolling type, just basic word boxes. You’d make a bloody fortune!!!

Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com

[Bill Sergio]

I am not confusing Close-Captioning with subtitles.

The TV stations want Closed Captioning which is for deaf people and written to line 21.

All new TV sets have decoders which can read line 21 encoding and which can display that text on the screen if you choose to display it.

It is that hard to write to line 21… each non-linear editing system, Avid, Media 100, etc. starts at a different column but it is easy to read.

Take any all black quicktime file with closed captioning on it for the media 100 and open it in a BINARY editor. You can easily see where each frame begins and easily read the bytes for captioning.

What makes this tedious is that you need to translate the letters you want to write into the corresponding byte code, not for the letters, but for the retarded system some geek came up with–it would be trival if they had just used the bytes that correspond to the alphabet!

So I am slowly writing alibrary and then it should be simpel to write to line 21 starting at any colum that corresponds to a specific editing system.

I am thinking that I will give away the software for FREE because I don’t believe in overcharging people when it comes to the issue of handicaped people and Apple should take the lead and publish the code since they are claiming to be so concerned about the handicaped!

The Infomercial King

[Andrew Mehta]

Nah, it was me that was confusing Subtitles and Closed Captioning, and thanks to Ernie for clarifying.

Meanwhile, looking forwards to the code InfoKing, all the best with it!

[Bill Sergio]

If anyone wants the code samples and references I have accummulated so far one coding lline 21 for closed captioning, just email me and I will email the links to you.

I am just tired of paying high prices for everything!

I don’t know if it is true, but somebody told me that the word “SONY” in Japanese stands for “Bend Over”?

The Infomercial King

[Andrew Mehta]

Nothing like that about the Sony Name here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SONY#Company_Name

And Soni means goldsmith in various indian languages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soni_%28language%29

Meanwhile, Japanese company names are discussed here:
https://www.languagehat.com/archives/001733.php
And someone called Dave claims:
“I had always heard the story that “Sony” was derived from “Sound” and “Nippon”, i.e. “So-Ni” with a friendlier spelling.” – although the Wikipedia story at the top, that I linked to first, would have us believe that is not the case, but a mere myth.

Okay, sorry for going off topic.