A Fight We MUST Win. Or: My Nasty Letter to FCC

As we have seen this week, the most important issue facing the deaf and hard of hearing community now is the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) recent issuing of waivers for captioning - including two PERMANENT exemptions. (The latest blog post on this is at the NAD Advocacy Blog, which also gives a phone number to call and protest).

If you live in the metro Washington, DC area, consider attending a protest against the FCC on Tuesday, September 26 at their public open meeting. (Unfortunately I may not be able to go myself.) Read more about the planned protest on Elizabeth's blog, and encourage your friends and family to go.

Amost 300 captioning exemptions were granted by the FCC! In our fast-growing multichannel world, this could balloon to thousands in the future if the FCC does not immediately change its attitude that captioning is not important. With the current FCC "inclination" to approve captioning exemption requests from nonprofit organizations, all sorts of special interest programming could be aired without captions!

It is bull___ to say that the cost of captioning is an "undue burden." According to the FCC decision statement for one of the companies, "New Beginning pays CTN $750 per week to air its show." They can afford to pay $750 per week yet the cost of captioning is just a fraction of that! The pre-taped captioning market is very competitive! In fact, it is so competitive that few companies are willing to post their rates online. I googled "captioning rates" and found a few examples:

• Bay Area Video Coalition - $400 for 30 min
• Carr-Hughes Productions - $275 for 30 min (with script)
• Aberdeen Captioning - as little as $7 a minute
• Post-production Captioning, LLC - as little as $7 a minute.

I sent a short e-mail letter to the FCC, reproduced below.

To: fccinfo@fcc.gov, Michael.Copps@fcc.gov, Deborah.Tate@fcc.gov, Robert.McDowell@fcc.gov, Monica.Desai@fcc.gov, Jay.Keithley@fcc.gov, Tom.Chandler@fcc.gov, Cheryl.King@fcc.gov, info@tdi-online.org

Subject: RESCIND THE CAPTIONING WAIVERS NOW

I am taking time out of my busy schedule to write you to insist that you immediately rescind the television captioning waivers that were issued recently.

It has been MANY years since the television captioning regulations were published. Producers of ALL kinds of programming have had PLENTY of time to plan for and budget for, captioning as a ROUTINE matter of production costs. Captioning is, and should be viewed as, no different from planning for the cost of sound, video, and editing.

NO television programs should be granted captioning waivers at this point in time because of "cost." It is an embarrassment to the Federal Communications Commission. Captioning is not a charitable activity, it is not a luxury, and it should not be treated as an afterthought! If the producers can't afford to caption their programs, maybe they should consider measures such as broadcasting in black and white instead of color, to cover the cost of captioning.

If the FCC grants captioning waivers to the producers of certain types of programming, what is there to stop the FCC from granting waivers for other types of programming? This is a dangerous, slippery slope that the FCC is getting itself onto.

Jamie Berke
About Deafness/Hard of Hearing
deafness.about.com

Have you written a nasty letter of your own to the FCC? Send me a copy, and I will gladly post it here at About Deafness/HOH. Meanwhile, you can read some excellent long letters on Ed's Telecom Alert blog - a letter from Karl, and a letter from Edward Markey, who is on the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.