Dept. of Ed. deems nearly 200 TV shows “inappropriate for captions”

lucky writes “The Department of Education decided that almost 200 TV shows should not be closed-captioned because they aren’t “educational, news, or informational”. Shows found lacking in educational value include “Bewitched”, “Law & Order”, and pretty much all sports. Hello, gatekeepers, your table is ready.”

November 18, 2003 by Blake Uncategorized 9

Fiona says:

November 18, 2003 at 6:58 am

Sigh
This is really bad. What, if you hear something it’s acceptable for family viewing but not if you read it? What an insult to the majority of deaf and hearing impaired people who are adults. This happens at the movies too – I’ve noticed at my local movies only one film per week has open captioned and it’s usually kids films.

The only plus in this is that they have access to the many thousands of wonderful foreign films and programs, the vast majority of which are open captioned and can be enjoyed by everyone.

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rochelle says:

November 18, 2003 at 9:36 am

Re:Sigh
Bewitched? Lacking in educational value? Bah! I learned a great deal of history about Salem and the witch trials. I also learned the difference between a Dick Sargent and a Dick York. Other lessons learned: don’t live across the street from your boss; it takes a special skill to wrinkle your nose and make magic (I am still working on it); it’s a short trip from Bewitched to Hollywood Squares; a good stiff drink will help you cope with any problem–supernatural or otherwise.

Have I effectively dated myself, now?

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Fang-Face says:

November 18, 2003 at 6:15 pm

I wouldn’t call this censorship . . .
Just dumbass insensitive. About what you’d expect in the profit driven marketplace. Off the top of my head I’d say the lobbyists went whining and sniveling to the gubmint and kvetched about how it would eat up too much of their profits to retro-caption all that programming. The effect is the same however.

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Anonymous Patron says:

November 18, 2003 at 9:27 pm

Bed Bug Bible Gang
It’s about darn time thatsomeone censored the Bed Bug Bible Gang. What filth that show is!

Just kidding, just kidding, just kidding!

Looking at those titles that were censored I was amazed at the titles that were deemed inappropriate. No wonder the panel that censored them is unnamed and anonymous.

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Anonymous Patron says:

November 18, 2003 at 9:45 pm

Re:I wouldn’t call this censorship . . .
I don’t know. I’d say it’s censorship because it’s one small group of people limiting access to information for a large group of people because the small group doesn’t think it’s appropriate. If that makes any sense.

I find it appalling.

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Mock Turtle says:

November 18, 2003 at 11:32 pm

Appalling, yes. . .
… surprising, no.

Remember, this is the same outfit (US Dept. of Ed.) that’s all set to kneecap ERIC, effective Dec. 19.

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Anonymous Patron says:

November 18, 2003 at 11:38 pm

Re:Bed Bug Bible Gang
Uh, I don’t remember anything about “censoring”…they were deciding which ones they could close caption, which I assume costs money.

Since it’s a government agency and captioning cost money, and no one (like the rich or big business, in my opinion) wants to pay any taxes, of course they have to limit stuff. duh.

And no matter what they limit, they will tick off someone.

I don’t work there, but have worked in state funded libraries for the past decade. No where I have ever worked can buy everything they need to do, much less everything they want to!

And, yes, library users do get really ticked when I have to explain that we don’t buy fiction videos cause we can’t afford to buy both non-fiction and fiction. And yes, the schoolkids and people who want to learn stuff win out over the people who want to watch things you can rent at the video store down the street.

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tomeboy says:

November 19, 2003 at 12:37 am

Damn Capitalists
Don’t be fooled comrades!

The partnership with WGBH is only window dressing.

The New York Times
October 9, 2003,

Closed Captions, Refreshed Without a Racing Typist

For deaf users, the Internet was initially a great leveler. But that is quickly changing. “With broadband and multimedia, the Internet is moving away from being a level playing field,” said Thomas Wlodkowski, the director of accessibility for America Online.

Now AOL has begun to introduce closed captioning for some of the multimedia programming on the service. To develop its system, AOL formed a partnership with the Media Access Group at the Boston public television station WGBH, which introduced captioning to television during a 1972 broadcast of “The French Chef” with Julia Child.

Three decades later, television captioning still relies on humans to type in text. But Mr. Wlodkowski said that the volume of multimedia material on the Web made that approach impractical. And although voice recognition technology has improved, it cannot accurately transcribe material created by a large number of different voices. What AOL came up with is a service that is partly automated and works only for broadcasts that are based on scripts, like news shows. Voice recognition software picks out certain words and uses them to synchronize with text on the screen that has been taken from the script.

Mr. Wlodkowski expects that the captioning service, besides appealing to deaf users, might find a following among office workers who want to view streaming video without bothering their colleagues or attracting the boss’s attention. Ian Austen

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Anonymous Patron says:

November 19, 2003 at 9:28 am

Re:Bed Bug Bible Gang
Yes this looks like cheap tv networks not wanting to foot the bill for CC. Why is the dept of ed even doing this ? why not the networks them self ?

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