Video Description Changes Eyed by FCC Members Go Against What MVPDs and TV Want
Upcoming rules on video descriptions likely will upset either industry or advocates for the blind. Agency officials said some FCC members are eying changes to a draft order, which hasn’t yet been modified. The order brings back a requirement that TV stations and multichannel video programming providers pass through at least 50 hours a quarter of audio descriptions of scenes lacking dialog (CD Aug 12 p4). Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps are among those considering moving to earlier in 2012 the proposed October 2012 date for compliance, agency officials said. That goes against what cable programmers and operators and broadcasters want. Advocates for those who can’t see well, meanwhile, said they're upset with the current version of the Media Bureau order.
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Other parts of the order likely will address the concerns of small cable operators and perhaps cable networks, too, agency officials said. They said the order applies video description rules to all MVPD systems with 50,000 or more subscribers. That’s compared to a rulemaking notice, which would have applied to any MVPD with at least that number of video customers across all systems (http://xrl.us/bmakzt). The American Cable Association had sought the threshold which the draft order took. There’s “a meaningful difference between these two size thresholds, and it’s important for the commission to clarify that they are referring to MVPD systems,” with the 50,000-subscriber number, Vice President Ross Lieberman said. “With the economic situation being as it is, smaller cable operators are more concerned than ever about being unduly burdened with new regulations, but we've been generally pleased with the commission’s sensitivity to this concern” on the threshold and other ways of dealing with the order, he said.
There’s active eighth-floor consideration to changing the October 2012 deadline, FCC officials said. Blind groups want an earlier deadline, while the broadcasting and cable industries want one similar to what’s in the draft. Clyburn and aides are “having many conversations about the timeline,” her office said: “That’s in an effort to understand what burdens broadcasters and MVPDs may face in implementing the new standards.” Other FCC members had no comment.
The broadcast and cable industries may give the FCC additional information to show why an earlier deadline wouldn’t work with network schedules, an agency official said. The NAB and NCTA may have filed that information after our deadline Thursday or will do so Friday in docket 11-43 (http://xrl.us/bmak2h), the official said: The groups don’t want video description to take effect mid-season, so a fall start date makes sense to them. Spokesmen for both associations declined to comment.
Resuming the descriptions mid-season wouldn’t be harder than doing so at the start of one, said the National Center for Accessible Media at Boston public-TV station WGBH. “The majority of their contract negotiations” to provide descriptions to cable and broadcast programmers “were completed in a day or two,” an aide to Copps reported executives of the center having told him: They didn’t “foresee problems beginning video description requirements mid-season,” and “an aggressive timeline can be met.” The rules first took effect April 1, 2002, the center noted. They were struck down that year by an appeals court.
"Nine years later,” the regulator has renewed authority from Congress to issue the rules, noted Director Jenifer Simpson of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “How much longer are people with visual disabilities supposed to wait for accessible TV?” There’s “been plenty of notice to industry” the rules are coming back, said Director Mark Richert of the American Foundation for the Blind. “Our fear is further delays are in the wind."
Broadcasters say a mid-season start wouldn’t work. “Due to the significant technical challenges, as well as the realities of the broadcast network program production schedule, video description programming requirements should not become effective until October 1, 2012,” NAB said. Executives met with Chairman Julius Genachowski’s media aide (http://xrl.us/bmak42). NCTA has said it wants “an appropriate implementation timeframe to ensure a smooth rollout of video description.”