A number of stakeholders have commented on the new closed captioning rules in the fairly recent past, and the FCC believes there are issues worth exploring. A Second Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking is out and another round of commenters are invited.
Addressing the matter, the FCC got specific.
It stated, “Specifically, the Commission invited comment on whether it should adopt a requirement for video programmers to file contact information and certifications of captioning compliance with the Commission or whether any other means should be used to make programmer contact information and certifications more widely available to consumers, video programming distributors (VPDs), and other interested parties.”
The Federal Register published the SFNPR 12/31/14, setting up a comment cycle that includes a 1/20/15 deadline for comments and a 1/30/15 deadline for reply comments.
RBR-TVBR observation: In recent cases involving requests for exemptions from closed captioning that came from religious entities producing Sunday-only church service programs, the FCC has indicated that it doesn’t care if or how much the programs earn or cost to make – if the entity’s finances are reasonably strong, it expects the captions to be there. And that is not one of the matters on the table in this proceeding.
