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Imagine you’re watching a newscast and every time the anchor cuts to a live feed from the reporter at the scene, your television screen goes blank. That’s just one of the many frustrations that 10% of the Canadian population who suffer from some form of hearing impairment experience when they watch most closed-captioned newscasts. But the crtc expects to see that change – and soon.

In a recent round of licence renewals for private English-language tv stations in b.c., Southern Ontario and Quebec, the crtc stipulated that local stations earning above $10 million a year must now caption all news programming, even live segments, by Sept. 1, 1998. And by the end of their licence terms, the stations must caption at least 90% of all programming.

Medium-sized stations (those earning between $5 million and $10 million annually) are ‘expected’ to meet the same obligations, and small stations (those earning less than $5 million) are being ‘encouraged’ to do likewise.

‘The commission is determined that a minimum of 90% closed captioning is a realistic target for broadcasters to achieve in this licence period,’ says crtc senior officer Marguerite Vogel.

‘More technology is available at less cost. There just aren’t the barriers that existed before,’ says Vogel. ‘While the crtc is generally pleased with the progress the stations have made over their last term, now it’s easier and less expensive for stations to caption programming.’

Vogel points out there is also a growing trend towards corporate sponsorship of closed-captioned programs, which has helped broadcasters offset the cost of captioning.

Captioning electronically converts the audio element of a show into the printed word, which typically can be seen at the bottom of tv screens with decoding capability or via a peripheral decoder. Since captions are for the hearing impaired, non-verbal sounds are also included in the captioning equation.

There are two kinds of captioning tech: offline/post-production captioning, wherein editors set the phrasing and arrangement of captions after a program is finished, with the final merger taking place prior to broadcast; and real-time captioning, wherein stenographers transcribe live programs at lightning speed as they are broadcast.

A less desirable form of real time is ‘live display,’ a process whereby scripted portions of a live show go directly from the teleprompter to a computer which does the caption translation. Anything that wasn’t in the script is dead and mysterious air to the captionees.

Howard Coren, director of corporate affairs for Calgary-based Nathanial Captioning, Canada’s largest real-time captioning service, with offices in five major centers across the country, says while he’s encouraged that the crtc appears to have made a strong stand for captioning, ‘most broadcasters want to get away with doing as little as they can because they don’t see it bringing in extra dollars for advertising. And now that the crtc does require captioning, some broadcasters are trying to do it the cheapest way possible, which is not the best quality for the consumer.’

He says most networks try to get away with a software system that takes captions off their teleprompter. It’s very poor quality because whenever a live portion or a late-breaking story comes on, the hearing-impaired person loses their ‘sound.’

‘Stations are very reluctant to commit to the expense of live captioning,’ claims Coren. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them tried to get out of their crtc requirements.’

Coren estimates 60% to 75% of all programming in Canada is closed captioned. Although the numbers sound encouraging, he points out that the bulk of that programming is American which arrives already captioned.

Susan Brinton, manager of program services with CanWest Global station ckvu Vancouver, which committed to caption 3,600 hours annually in its last licence renewal, says, ‘It’s not that broadcasters don’t want to caption, it’s just that it’s very expensive.’

She says CanWest pays $450 per half-hour for post-production captioning on 65 episodes of a show. ‘This means we are paying $28,000 to caption a daytime strip, which is a very significant number on an otherwise cost-efficient program.’

Roy Gardner, vp of programming for bctv, WIC Western International Communications’ flagship station in Vancouver, says with the increased requirements for closed captioning, wic is examining the feasibility of setting up its own in-house closed-captioning operation to service all wic stations.

‘The problem with doing it in-house is that you need several people who are highly trained in this area to make sure it’s done seven days a week, and it’s a very labor-intensive kind of thing,’ says Gardner.

He adds he is somewhat reluctant to move in this direction as wic’s supplier, Nathanial, does such a good job. But given the anticipated costs, he predicts there will likely be some form of in-house captioning at wic within the next two years.

Coren, supported by the crtc, contends captioning has become far more affordable for the broadcaster.

‘Our costs have come down dramatically since we began. Our rates used to be close to $3,000 an hour, but now, depending on the amount of captioning required, it’s less than $300 an hour. The price of captioning in comparison to production cost is nominal,’ he says.

Coren says one of the primary reasons for the high cost of real-time captioning is that it is a very difficult skill to master. ‘The biggest challenge for most companies is finding capable people.’

He says Nathanial looks for ex-court reporters, but only 1% of that group are qualified to do the job. And when they do make it into a training program the dropout rate of trainees is extremely high and it becomes a very expensive process. ‘Most of our money is spent training people,’ he says.

Chuck Leonard, vp of CommuniCaption Canada, a division of William F. Cooke Television Enterprises and a sister company of Off ‘n Online, says that the increased captioning demands on broadcasters needn’t be alarming, as the caption services will be trading off price for volume: ‘We can make it cheaper if the volume is there.’

And convenient. Through its local access network, CommuniCaption can link computers with broadcasters, negating tape shuttling. CommuniCaption offers real time and complete offline including its ace in the hole: simultaneous dual-language captioning using ccs proprietary software, CCTC Plus, which Leonard says no one else in Canada offers.

Citytv is another broadcaster looking at establishing an in-house department to caption some of its local programming, primarily because of the tight time constraints of many of its shows.

Director of technical services John Krug says City will still be using outside captioners, who do a great job, but that an in-house department would make sense on certain shows. Factoring in the premium suppliers charge for a two-day turnaround, he says City would probably save some money in the long run. Another consideration is that equipment is developing all the time, particularly in the offline area, and unlike some of the purchases broadcasters have to shell out for, is not excessively expensive.

Canada Caption Inc., a non-profit organization founded by executive director Beverley Ostafichuk to encourage more closed captioning, is gearing up to help broadcasters and post houses who want to improve their captioning ability with training courses through the Caption Training Centre.

cci recently moved to its new Oakville facility and expects the training center to be operational this fall; it may expand its operations to include mobile on-site training.

Another cci initiative which should be all systems go this fall is the non-profit Caption Distribution Centre, which will help get broadcasters through the compatibility hell experienced when rebroadcasting a previously captioned show.

There are over 50 captioning shops in North America, and at one time most were using self-modified software systems requiring special encoders. Although most of this can be read through a Smart encoder, there is a need for a universal encoder. The cdc will solve this problem for broadcasters, and will act as central relay for broadcasters trying to track down captioning which is supposed to come with a program, but sometimes doesn’t arrive.

Not surprisingly, many broadcasters are anxiously awaiting the development of new voice-recognition technology to help reduce costs even further.

cci is currently working with Industry Canada, Rogers Communications and Lobco to develop VoiceCap technology for cyberwriter, a new disk-based voice recognition captioning system.

cci general manager Kathryn Kennedy says the system will simplify and expand captioning possibilities and will be less expensive than existing systems. It’s also the first step towards creating a speaker-independent system that can be used in a real-time environment.

cyberwriter is currently being tested with several large broadcasters in Ontario.

Coren, however, says captioning stenographers can write 250 words per minute but computers can’t yet match that volume, and the programs are still too voice-specific; when they deal with a large number of voices inaccuracies occur.

ReCap, a caption conversion technology that will convert foreign formats to ntsc, is another cci r&d initiative.

With the crtc’s tougher stance on closed captioning, more companies are getting into the captioning business.

Media House is one such shop, recently adding captioning services to its Regina-based post facility.

Bob Dunhauser, marketing director of Media House, says, ‘We’re new, so many people are surprised to hear we have the capability but they welcome the proximity of the service to the Prairie provinces.’

The appeal of captioning has also expanded into other audience segments. In addition to the deaf and hard of hearing, educators have discovered that captioning is helping to encourage word recognition, reading skills and comprehension in children, the illiterate and immigrants learning a new language.

And with the boomers getting on in years, the percentage of Canadians with hearing problems is bound to increase (after all those formative years spent too close to speakers at rock concerts).