The report for free-to-air compliance found that all 51 commercial stations and SBS met their captioning target for the year, which was to caption 95 per cent of programs on their primary channels between 6 am and midnight. The ABC fell one per cent below its target, due to the fact that only one hour of its music program
42 commercial channels, the ABC and SBS reported breaches of the obligation to caption repeats on their multi-channels (i.e. channels such as ABC2, SBS2, Gem, 7Two and One) which had previously been captioned for a primary channel. The breaches were caused by technical difficulties, human errors and procedural issues.
The captioning obligations for subscription television services vary according to the genre and category of each channel. The report found that 99 per cent of channels met their targets, while 67 percent exceeded them. Over the entire year, 2,080,552 hours of captioned program were broadcast on subscription channels, 622,192 hours more than the previous financial year.
“This is a great result from the television industry, which has shown its commitment to captioning,” said Media Access Australia’s project manager for television, Chris Mikul, “while it also demonstrates the benefits of a robust and transparent reporting system.”
For more information, and to download the full reports, go to the ACMA’s media release.
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