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FCC Regulations and Implementation Schedule

Taken from the FCC web site       Deadline for Spanish Language Broadcasting

Closed captioning is an assistive technology designed to provide access to television for persons with hearing disabilities. Through captioning, the audio portion of programming is displayed as text superimposed over the video.

As part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress instructed the Commission to require video program distributors (cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors and other multi-channel video programming distributors) to phase in closed captioning of their television programs.

All English language programming prepared or formatted for display on analog television and first shown on or after January 1, 1998, as well as programming prepared or formatted for display on digital television that was first published or exhibited after July 1, 2002 ("digital programming"), is considered "New Programming," and must be captioned according to benchmarks set by the FCC.

The following benchmarks establish how much "New Programming" must be captioned each calendar quarter:

January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2001: 450 hours of programming per channel per quarter

January 1, 2002 to December 31, 2003: 900 hours of programming per channel per quarter

January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2005: 1350 hours of programming per channel per quarter

January 1, 2006 and thereafter: 100% of all programming, with some exemptions.

Spanish Language Programming Schedule

Exemptions

There are some exemptions to the above captioning requirements (for both English and Spanish language programming). Examples include but are not limited to the following:
  • most 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 and promotional announcements that are shorter than 10 minutes, unless they are federally-funded or produced; and


  • programming provided by program 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 file with the FCC a petition for an exemption for specific programming if supplying captions for that programming would result in an undue burden for the provider or distributor.

Real-time vs. Electronic Newsroom Captioning Technique

Real-time captioning typically uses stenographers to convert the entire audio portion of a live program to captions.

Electronic Newsroom Technique (ENT) creates captions from a news script computer or teleprompter used for live newscasts. Because only material that is scripted can be captioned with ENT, breaking news, sports and weather updates, and live field reports are typically not captioned when ENT is used.

As of January 1, 2000, FCC rules do not permit the four major national broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC) or their affiliates in the top 25 television markets, or national non-broadcast networks (e.g., cable) serving at least 50% of the total number of households subscribing to video programming services, to count live news programming using ENT toward their captioning requirements.

Rather, these networks and affiliates must provide real-time captioning for live news programming in order to meet the FCC's captioning benchmarks.

Other programming distributors and providers, however, are permitted to use ENT for live programming to meet the captioning mandates.



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