Do complaints about CC do any good?

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TheDPR

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Watching the new FX show "American Horror Story" on Wednesday was extremely annoying. The closed-captioning was completely missing in four or five scenes, there were several mistakes in the captioning that was provided, and often the captions were seconds late after the speaker, making it difficult to follow conversations.

If I take the time to write up a complaint and send it in to FX or 20th Century Fox what are the chances the problem will be fixed soon? Because if the same thing happens next episode, we're just going to turn it off. The show is strangely interesting but definitely not good enough to keep us coming back if the CC is bad.
 
NO!! My granddaughter came over and she wanted to watch some TV so I turned on a public TV station for kids and they had no CC!! I keep my CC on all the time. I called the station and reported that they had no CC and I was told they would fix it! That was 2 weeks ago and there is still NO CC so deaf and hoh can enjoy watching the shows too! I watch public and they have CC ,so I do not understand why there is none for their kids station! I use to watch channel 7 for news but their CC never stay on for the whole show, I do not know how many times I had called channel 7 news to get them to fix their CC!
I find channel 5 is better with their CC when watching the news.
 
TheDPR said:
Watching the new FX show "American Horror Story" on Wednesday was extremely annoying. The closed-captioning was completely missing in four or five scenes, there were several mistakes in the captioning that was provided, and often the captions were seconds late after the speaker, making it difficult to follow conversations.

If I take the time to write up a complaint and send it in to FX or 20th Century Fox what are the chances the problem will be fixed soon? Because if the same thing happens next episode, we're just going to turn it off. The show is strangely interesting but definitely not good enough to keep us coming back if the CC is bad.
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Actually, when Oprah first launched her network OWN in Canada, there are no CCs at all. I wrote to them and they actually replied the same day with profound apologies and said they were working hard at resolving the issues. Two days later, all OWN shows had CCs.

It does make a difference.
 
If you don't complain to the right people there is no point whining to everyone else. It is exactly because no-one complains that things get worse instead of better. Make the effort, together we can change the world! <- Well you never know! :)
 
SimonJ said:
If you don't complain to the right people there is no point whining to everyone else. It is exactly because no-one complains that things get worse instead of better. Make the effort, together we can change the world! <- Well you never know! :)
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Valid point - when I wrote to the OWN network, I first started off saying that I'm an Oprah fan and eager to watch her network but couldn't because of the lack of CCs - they answered my email the same day.
 
posts from hell said:
If the issue persists you can file a compliant with the FCC.
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believe me this does no good. Ive filed mutliple FORMAL complaints with the FCC regarding Fox News and NBC News and one for A&E channel, and I was told "through further review the stations were providing everything required by the FCC". Ive got a stack of letters from the FCC and the above stations all telling me that they are cooperating with all of the rules
 
Sometimes the problem is with your reception, not with the tv station's transmitter.

We sometimes use the "Microsoft method" of getting our CCs to work - turn the TV off and then turn it back on again. Quite often this works. Don't ask me why, I have no idea. But clearly there's a reception problem somewhere.
 
tigersharkdude said:
I was told "through further review the stations were providing everything required by the FCC".
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That's about it. By law "reasonable accommodation" doesn't necessarily mean good accommodation. As long as they are making a good faith effort to provide closed captioning (meaning they are at least attempting to provide it in some capacity) then they are in full compliance with the law even if the actual service provided is inadequate. And if you tried to get the law changed in order to raise the standards then you would get lots of push back from media giants with deep pockets who would insist that it would place on them an unreasonable financial hardship.

One thing you might try is seeing if you can watch the shows shows online since they tend to have much more accurate closed captioning (at least when it's offered).
 
DeafCaroline said:
Actually, when Oprah first launched her network OWN in Canada, there are no CCs at all. I wrote to them and they actually replied the same day with profound apologies and said they were working hard at resolving the issues. Two days later, all OWN shows had CCs.

It does make a difference.
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Wow. That's a good deal more responsive than the vast majority of corporations that I can think of off my head. Now I have even more respect for Oprah and her networks.
 
I wrote this somewhere else so forgive me I'm new at this. Only been deaf for 5months!! The news the other day was talking about "test scores" but CC said "testicles" funny if it wasn't such a problem!!!
 
I know I have tried complaining to YouTube officials or whoever is in charge to correct the CC on the stuff they have...because it sucks. I have tried watching American Horror Story as well, and the CC on it was so bad that it was just gobbledygook. I have a hell of a time finding anything online movie-wise to watch with CC. I haven't heard back from anyone at YouTube...and it's been damn near 3 weeks. Somehow I don't figure I'm gonna get a reply either.:roll:
 
mizwytch said:
I know I have tried complaining to YouTube officials or whoever is in charge to correct the CC on the stuff they have...because it sucks.
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YouTube doesn't actually control the content on their site since it's all user driven, so whatever closed captioning you get is generally whatever the uploader has elected to put on there.

On a different note, I've noticed that many video games have very poor captioning. The only developer that seems to take it seriously is Valve Software who puts full closed captioning in all of their games, so not only is the dialog captioned (with each character clearly identified and in their own captioning color, which is a really nice touch) but all incidental sound effects as well. Most games just offer dialog subtitles, and even then it's usually poorly.

I've often thought of contacting other developers and encouraging them to follow Valve's example.
 
I am told it does good to complain, but every time I have complained about CC it never did any good, and yes I did complain to the right people. I think mostly that only works with the bigger companies that know it would be a big deal if they didn't make themselves accessible.
 
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