{"id":746,"date":"2006-11-10T15:58:14","date_gmt":"2006-11-10T20:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/more-ugly-news-on-captioning-exemptions\/"},"modified":"2006-11-10T15:58:14","modified_gmt":"2006-11-10T20:58:14","slug":"more-ugly-news-on-captioning-exemptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/11\/10\/more-ugly-news-on-captioning-exemptions\/","title":{"rendered":"More Ugly News on Captioning Exemptions"},"content":{"rendered":"

More Ugly News on Captioning Exemptions
\nBy Cheryl Heppner<\/p>\n

Many of you have been following the recent saga of sudden mass exemptions granted for closed captioning of TV programs. The exemptions, over 270 of them, were given by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to mostly faith-based organizations. Few of these organizations provided the required evidence to show that captioning would be an undue burden. <\/p>\n

Actions by Consumer Organizations
\nI have been working with a team of advocates from TDI, NAD, AAPD, CSD, DHHCAN and HLAA to address the serious errors committed in the granting of these permanent exemptions from closed captioning. <\/p>\n

Among our actions were:
\n– Two meetings were held with FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate, one with Commissioner Robert McDowell, one with Chairman Kevin Martin, and conversations with Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.<\/p>\n

– An “Application for Review of Bureau Order” filed with the FCC. We asked that all grants of exemption be rescinded and that the FCC individually review each petition for exemption to determine undue burden, and place all current and future exemptions on public notice. We pointed out that the FCC had violated the Telecommunications Act and Administrative Procedures Act, and had committed a number of procedural violations.<\/p>\n

– A “Petition for Emergency Stay” was also filed with the FCC. In this petition, we noted that the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau arbitrarily overruled its own precedent without giving any rationale. We also reminded the FCC that the Bureau did not have delegated authority to create new rules or categories of captioning exemptions, only to administer and enforce rules and policies already created.<\/p>\n

Action by National Religious Broadcasters in Opposition
\nThe National Association of Religious Broadcasters (NRB), which is based at Technology Drive in Manassas, VA, filed an opposition to our “Application for Review of Bureau Order”, requesting that it be denied by the FCC.<\/p>\n

In response, we filed a reply today that refutes their argument. The NRB gave as its interpretation of the test of undue burden a requirement that shows captioning would “likely produce a central interference, a mission-critical intrusion onto the non-profit organization\u2019s \u2018programming\u2019 or \u2018other activities important to its mission\u2019”. Among other things, we pointed out that it\u2019s not clear how the FCC would characterize an organization\u2019s “mission”, or determine which activities are “important” or which intrusions are “mission-critical”.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s Shocking Development
\nThe FCC released a Public Notice on November 7, 2006 that we did not receive until the afternoon of November 8, 2006. This notice said that the FCC had put the petitions for those 290+ entities which received exemptions on its website on October 12, 2006 The FCC also made information about additional petitions available on its website.<\/p>\n

Buried in a footnote was the news that the petitions for exemption already granted by letter order were being “held in abeyance until the comment cycle on these petitions has ended.” <\/p>\n

Good news: The FCC is indicating that its earlier decision to grant 290+ exemptions apparently isn\u2019t final. <\/p>\n

Bad news: We must submit comments on these and hundreds more new requests for exemption – a total of about 600 petitions – even though most of them clearly lack any information to justify an undue burden exemption. The FCC staff needs only to look in their files to see this.<\/p>\n

Incredibly bad news: We have 20 days to file our comments. That\u2019s 20 days from the date the Public Notice was released. We already lost 1 1\/2 days before we knew of its release. Tomorrow and November 23-24 are holidays. November 11, 12, 25, and 26 are weekends. This gives us a total of 11 working days to go through and write up comments before the deadline of Monday, November 27, and two of them are already gone. That\u2019s an average of 66 or 67 we\u2019d have to comment on each working day. <\/p>\n

You can find the FCC\u2019s Public Notice at:<\/p>\n

Click to access da062287.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

And More Gripes!
\nWe didn\u2019t need another stab to the heart, but the Public Notice issued on November 7 had a lot of objectionable language and inaccuracies. One that definitely didn\u2019t sit well was the FCC\u2019s note “where similar petitions were previously placed on public notice, an opposition was filed by only one coommenter:. Our coalition of organizations that had worked together to file comments in the past (aided enormously by pro bono lawyers at Bingham McCutchen) does its best to represent the more than 30 million people who are deaf or hard of hearing. <\/p>\n

The FCC\u2019s public notice also blames our coalition for deciding not to put any more petitions for captioning exemption on public notice. They cite a letter sent to them in after we learned that more than 450 exemption requests had been sent to the FCC. In this letter, we said that it was a hardship to our organzations to file oppositions to petitions that were “clearly deficient” \u2014 the ones that didn\u2019t have all the information required by the FCC\u2019s own regulations. We said we\u2019d only file oppositions to petitions that raised new issues. We felt that after filing dozens of oppositions we had established a clear precedent with the FCC that we expected them to put each petition to the test contained in their own regulations.<\/p>\n

The November 7 public notice says, “As a result, the Commission stopped placing these petitions on public notice.” the November 7 public notice says. How crazed is that? How can we know if the exemption requests are clearly deficient or not unless they\u2019re placed on public notice? And why assume that we are the only people in the entire nation who might have something to say about the petitions for exemption?<\/p>\n

So this is our reward for speaking up, 600 petitions to respond to in 20 days. <\/p>\n

——————————————————————————–<\/p>\n

\u00a92006 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), 3951 Pender Drive, Suite 130, Fairfax, VA 22030; www.nvrc.org Items in this newsletter are provided for information purposes only; NVRC does not endorse products or services. You do not need permission to share this information, but please be sure to credit NVRC. This news service is free of charge, but donations are greatly appreciated. To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your email address, or report a problem receiving the news, send an email to cheppner@nvrc.org<\/p>\n

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More Ugly News on Captioning Exemptions By Cheryl Heppner Many of you have been following the recent saga of sudden mass exemptions granted for closed captioning of TV programs. The exemptions, over 270 of them, were given by the Federal…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deaf-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p752R-c2","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":16470,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/11\/01\/fcc-cracks-down-on-religious-broadcasters\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":0},"title":"FCC cracks down on religious broadcasters","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"FCC cracks down on religious broadcasters By BROOKS BOLIEK October31, 2011 If a church broadcasts the word of God on TV without closed captions, it risks incurring the wrath of the FCC. Some 300 small- to medium-sized churches can expect letters from the commission within the next few days explaining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2692,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2007\/12\/26\/tdi-conference-tv-captioning-issues-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":1},"title":"TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues – Part 1","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"December 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"TDI Conference: TV Captioning Issues - Part 1 By Lise Hamlin One of the sessions that packed in the audience at the TDI Conference in San Mateo was a panel discussion of TV captioning issues. Cheryl Heppner moderated this discussion. She introduced the panel, then launched into a description of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":431,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/09\/14\/the-news-just-got-worse\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":2},"title":"The News Just Got Worse!","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"September 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The News Just Got Worse! By Cheryl Heppner In addition to the two exemptions announced today, the Federal Communications Commission has sent out 250 more letters granting captioning exemptions! They are apparently poised to send out another huge batch of letters that will amount to a total of about 550\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":472,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/09\/22\/nad-urges-protest-against-fcc\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":3},"title":"NAD Urges Protest Against FCC","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"September 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"National Association of the Deaf NAD Urges Protest Against FCC A News Release from the National Association of the Deaf Release Date: September 22, 2006 For Immediate Release Contact: Anita B. Farb Director, Outreach and Communications National Association of the Deaf Email: info@nad.org +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ NAD Urges Protest Against FCC Silver\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15181,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2011\/07\/26\/fcc-sets-six-month-deadline-for-internet-closed-captioning\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":4},"title":"FCC sets six-month deadline for Internet closed captioning","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"July 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"FCC sets six-month deadline for Internet closed captioning July 24, 2011 By Michael Grotticelli The FCC\u2019s Video Programming Accessibility Advisory Committee delivered its report on closed captioning last week, setting in motion a six-month time period for new rules requiring captions on the Internet. \u201cGiven the goal of providing closed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/category\/deaf-news\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":440,"url":"https:\/\/deafnetwork.com\/wordpress\/blog\/2006\/09\/19\/tell-the-fcc-you-have-the-right-to-access-captioning-for-local-religious-tv-programs\/","url_meta":{"origin":746,"position":5},"title":"Tell the FCC You Have the Right to Access Captioning for Local Religious TV Programs","author":"Grant Laird Jr","date":"September 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"TDI-L eNote 9\/18\/06 ACTION ALERT \u2013 Tell the FCC You Have the Right to Access Captioning for Local Religious TV Programs TDI wants to thank you for sending letters to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month regarding their actions on TV emergency captioning. 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