Return of Video Description to Pay, Broadcast TV Envisioned in FCC Draft
Audio descriptions of on-screen action would make a comeback, starting next year, under a draft rulemaking notice that the FCC is tentatively set to vote on at Thursday’s meeting (CD Feb 14 p6), said agency officials and an advocate for people with disabilities. They said the rulemaking largely proposes to implement last year’s Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act and would phase in compliance starting Oct. 8, the legislation’s first anniversary. As set forth in the CVAA, the commission proposes to require top-market Big Four broadcast network affiliates by Jan. 1 to start describing, using speech, what amounts to about four hours weekly of programming, FCC officials said. Cable, DBS and telco-TV providers would have obligations, too.
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The draft proposes that the four highest-rated TV stations in the largest 25 markets have video descriptions of at least 50 hours quarterly of prime time or children’s programming or both, commission officials said. They said that under the proposal in the draft notice, all multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) with at least 50,000 subscribers would need to have video descriptions for the five highest-rated cable networks. The draft asks any cable channels that believe they're top-rated but feature so much live or near-live programming that it would be hard for the content to have video descriptions to seek exemptions during the initial comments, agency officials said. They said the CVAA exempts from video descriptions real-time programming and content considered near-live.
The draft rulemaking asks more general questions, too. It asks about what constitutes near-live programming and about the costs to do video descriptions, FCC officials said. They said the item also asks about how long it takes to make such video descriptions. The draft asks anyone who wants to dispute that a top-rated network is exempt from the CVAA’s requirements, in that MVPDs wouldn’t need to carry video descriptions from the channel, to do that during the reply period, a commission official said. A Media Bureau spokeswoman declined to comment.
The act brings back descriptions of programming where there’s no dialogue -- speech is captioned, and captions can be relayed aloud to those who are blind or have trouble seeing, said Director Eric Bridges of the American Council of the Blind. The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2002 threw out the FCC’s previous rules, he noted. Some shows, such as The Simpsons on Fox, have video descriptions, but much other programming lacks it, so Bridges and others who can’t see don’t know what’s happening during action scenes and other sequences without speech, he said. “You'll hear a voice explain what’s happening,” which “fills in the blanks for the viewer."
The CVAA envisions a lengthy implementation process for video descriptions, said Bridges. Four years after the bill became law, it will allow the commission to increase video description requirements to seven hours weekly on the nine TV channels already affected by the draft rulemaking, he said. Two years later, the regulator must make broadcasters in the 60 largest U.S. markets provide video descriptions, up from the 25 markets envisioned in year two, Bridges said. Starting in 2020, the agency can add 10 markets each year, so eventually all markets have video descriptions, he said. “It’s a 10-year process.”