Closed Captions

August 2014 – Anvato, provider of the leading video platform and multi-device player TV Everywhere, announced that their turnkey video software has reached full compliance with the FCC’s latest closed-captioning mandate. The FCC extended IP closed-captioning to “straight-lift” video clips, montages, and video clips of programming shown live and near-live on television in July. According to Anvato, they have met these requirements, as well as captioning compliance for back-catalog content less than a month after the ruling.

August 2014 – The Federal Communications Commission released a public notice informing citizens of an adopted order requiring closed captioning of internet video clips [MB Docket No. 11-154]. According to the Federal Register summary, published August 5, 2014, the adopted rules concerning video clips delivered using Internet protocol will be effective on September 4, 2014. Compliance dates are as follow:

July 2014 – The Federal Communications Commission has announced new sanctions extending closed captioning for online video content, including: “straight lift” clips, montages, live and near-live television programming.

June 2014 – The FCC issued a Public Notice denying petitions for exemption from closed captioning rules.  Sixteen different entities were named in the Notice, 12 of which br8adcast religious programming.  Under the current process, programming providers, owners or producers are able to file a petition for exemption from closed captioning their content if they could show the process to be “economically burdensome.” Regarding the 16 entities cited, the FCC reviewed their initial requests but required further information before processing.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has issued final rules in accordance with Section 713 of the Communications Act to enhance the quality of closed captioning.  Despite previous rules, the FCC has continually received comments noting that captions are often found to be “inaccurate, garbled, incomplete, misspelled and/or misunderstood, incomprehensible, obscure the speaker, or significantly lag behind the spoken words they are intended to convey.”  The final rules require that captions are accurate and synchronous in portraying the spoken words and background noises, are present for