What Are The Rules of Closed Captioning by Impact Media
Certified FCC compliant Captioning Services
Closed captioning allows persons with hearing disabilities to have access to television programming, by displaying the audio portion of a television program, as text on the television screen. Beginning in July 1993, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) required all analog television receivers with screens 13 inches or larger sold or manufactured in the United States to contain built-in decoder circuitry to display closed captioning. Beginning July 1, 2002, the FCC also required that digital television (DTV) receivers include closed captioning display capability.
In 1996, Congress required video program distributors (cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors, and other multi-channel video programming distributors) to close caption their television programs. In 1997, the FCC set a transition schedule requiring distributors to provide an increasing amount of captioned programming.
January 1, 2006, all "new" English language programming, defined as analog programming first published or exhibited on or after January 1, 1998, and digital programming first aired on or after July 1, 2002, must be captioned, with some exceptions.
March 2015 Best Practices of Closed Captioning went into effect, requiring rules for accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and placement of captions, which also required prerecorded content, is off-line captioned.
January 2016: Video clips were required to be closed captioned if any portion of the clip appeared on television, or via IP closed captioned at any time.
January 1, 2017: all montage clips must be closed captioned from any prerecorded programming captioned on television or via IP. This applies to any portion of television programs, such as best of or highlights could be considered a montage.
July 1, 2017: "near-live" programming (less than 24 hours after recording must be closed captioned within 8 hours of initial airing. In addition any live programing closed captioned for television must be closed captioned within 12 hours of the broadcast if delivered via IP.
Please note that these new captioning rules require that they meet the new best practices of closed captioning guidelines, and must adhere to accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and caption placement rules put into place by the FCC in March of 2015. If you found this information useful and would like to read more of CC Girl's Blogs by Impact Media please keep checking back to our Website for more blog posts at http://closedcaptionservice.com/blog
