TCN has breached the Broadcasting Services Act for failing to provide a captioning service for 27 programs on GO!
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has found that between August 9 to 11 had not been captioned, a requirement of shows airing from 6 -10:30pm.
TCN says that the error was due to complex technical difficulties which precluded full system pre-checks during its launch. It became aware of the problem on August 10th and corrected the error by August 12th in Melbourne, Brisbane and regional areas, and by August 13th in Sydney.
Captioning is not required on digital channels unless the shows have previously aired on primary channels with captioning, as was found in the 27 titles.
ACMA says in view of the reasonably quick resolution of the fault it has decided to take no further action at this stage.
Thank you for reporting on this issue. I’m not hard of hearing, but I do often use the caption feature because I can’t always have the tv volume up as loud as I would like. I live in a flat, so to be considerate to my neighbours, especially late at night, I use the captions.
While on holidays at Ayr near Townsville (I live in Darwin) I see GO! programs and yet to see subtitles on GO! on WIN on channel 88. I understand there are old programs on GO! on which Nine may not be able to caption, such as Bewitched, but they should make popular programs with subtitles on on GO! similar to 7 TWO.
Captioning should be mandatory. I sometimes find some of the accents hard to understand especially the women who plays Stacey from the show “Gavin and Stacey ” on 72 and the women who plays Gwen Cooper on Torchwood. Welsh accent ?
What about people who are seriously hearing impaired ?
no further action taken
why am i not suprised about that
If i read that report correct, this was for the first week of Ch9′s digital Channel GO!.