FCC Will Divide Captioning Responsibility Between Programmers, VPDs
The FCC will vote to approve a draft order Thursday that would divide responsibility between programmers and video programming distributors (VPDs) for delivering closed captioning on video programming, said industry and FCC officials in interviews Wednesday. The draft apportions responsibility to programmers over the objections of content companies such as Viacom and CBS , and concerns expressed by consumer protection groups for the hearing impaired, such as Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (TDI).
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VPD groups such as the American Cable Association and Comcast supported the FCC plan, called “the burden shifting proposal,” in numerous filings. Along with requiring both VPDs and programmers to be responsible for captioning complaints, the draft order requires programmers to certify that they will comply with captioning rules, the industry and FCC officials told us. The item is expected to be approved by all commissioners, an official said.
Consumer groups are concerned that dividing responsibility between the programmers and VPDs could make it harder for consumers to know where to bring their complaints about captioning failures, said Georgetown Institute for Public Representation attorney Drew Simshaw, who represents TDI. Since VPDs already interact with customers, they are better positioned to take consumer complaints, TDI said in a filing in docket 05-231. The draft order would instead require each entity to be responsible for the aspects of captioning that it controls, an FCC official told us. Programmers are largely responsible for attaching captions to content, while VPDs are mainly responsible for passing that information through to consumers, the official said.
The draft item would also require programmers to certify that they are in compliance with captioning rules. The certifications would be made to the FCC, and available online, officials told us. VPDs would be required to inform programmers about the certification requirement, and VPDs that deal with programmers that aren't so certified could be opening themselves up to enforcement action, the FCC official said.