FCC Divides Captioning Responsibility Between VPDs, Programmers in 4-1 Vote
The FCC voted 4-1 to allocate responsibility for closed captioning complaints between video programming distributors and programmers, during Thursday's commission meeting. Commissioner Mike O'Rielly dissented in part and concurred in part; Commissioner Ajit Pai approved in part and concurred in part. The order, as expected (see 1602170055), apportions responsibility for captions to programmers and VPDs based on what parts of the captioning process they control. It requires programmers to certify they're in compliance with captioning rules and creates a "compliance ladder" that will allow captioning problems to be addressed outside of Enforcement Bureau action, said a Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau news release .
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The order "ensures that the legal responsibilities imposed by our rules reflect the real-world responsibilities of the parties involved in bringing television to viewers’ homes,” said Chairman Tom Wheeler in a statement. “Video programmers exert the most direct control over the creation of closed captions, and thus, as compared to VPDs, can exercise greater control over the non-technical quality components of closed captioning.”
The order should also shift the burden for providing captions to programmers, and make them responsible for caption quality, said O’Rielly: “The same logical argument for the quality shift should apply to provisioning.” He also said procedures for bypassing enforcement actions will be easy for the Enforcement Bureau to ignore. “This creates an illusion of a thoughtful and judicious regulator, but it preserves the right to throw that out the window without any questions asked whenever the bureaus feel like it,” O’Rielly said. “No, thank you.”
Because the order means “a lower burden” on multichannel video programming distributors, they should be diligent in fulfilling their remaining captioning obligations, said Georgetown Institute for Public Representation attorney Drew Simshaw in an email. Simshaw represents Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. TDI “appreciates” that the FCC has clarified what entities are responsible for captions, he said.
Primary responsibility for captions is still with VPDs, and before complaints can be passed on to programmers, VPDs have to certify they "exercised due diligence" to make sure the problem isn't on the carrier side. Programmers will have some responsibility for caption quality, and for providing captions on all nonexempt programs, the agency release said. Programmers will have a single annual filing requirement to certify they're following captioning rules, it said.
The rule change revises captioning complaint rules to acknowledge the new shared responsibility and creates a "compliance ladder" intended to "swiftly resolve reported problems" without having to resort to enforcement action, the release said. Pai and O'Rielly said earlier drafts of the order would have made it easier for captioning complaints to lead to enforcement actions, but negotiations on the eighth floor led to those provisions being revised.