osmigo@emx.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan) (08/10/90)
Index Number: 9649 As a rule, I'm constantly frustrated by the abysmal quality of the closed captioning during the evening news (Brokaw, Jennings, Rather). Many times the mistakes, usually phonic, would be hilarious if they weren't so **** frustrating. Er, just now, as I write this.... caption: "...the milk of the Persian Gulf..." actual dialogue: "the middle of the Persian Gulf...." Anyway, for the past couple of months, the closed captions on ABC news (Peter Jennings) and Nightline (Ted Koppel) have been malfunctioning in some way. It looks like the person doing the captioning simply can't type fast enough. As I'm *trying* to follow the Middle East crisis, this is infuriating beyond description. It usually starts out OK for about 30 seconds, then goes down to a series of captions like: In the.. But... Hussein said that.. then... all of... after... dollars... with his... President Bush... the... on... that is... You get the picture. About 80% of the words are omitted. Maybe the captioner isn't hitting the return key hard enough or something. I'm not sure, though, just WHERE this problem is coming from. Other ABC programs, and captioned broadcasts on other networks, work just fine. Is anyone else here seeing this? Please respond, as I'm preparing to contact ABC and/or the National Captioning Institute about it. Thanks Ron Morgan osmigo@emx.utexas.edu
Stu.Turk@f26.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Stu Turk) (08/14/90)
Index Number: 9804 [This is from the Silent Talk Conference] > From: osmigo@emx.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan) > > As a rule, I'm constantly frustrated by the abysmal quality of the > closed captioning during the evening news (Brokaw, Jennings, Rather). > Many times the mistakes, usually phonic, would be hilarious if they weren't > so **** frustrating. Er, just now, as I write this.... > > caption: "...the milk of the Persian Gulf..." > > actual dialogue: "the middle of the Persian Gulf...." = You need to practice talking to people over a TDD or in 'chat' on a BBS. YOu get used to "translating" errors like that quickly. <grin> > Anyway, for the past couple of months, the closed captions on ABC > news (Peter Jennings) and Nightline (Ted Koppel) have been > malfunctioning in some way. It looks like the person doing the > captioning simply can't type fast enough. As I'm *trying* to > follow the Middle East crisis, this is infuriating beyond > description. It usually starts out OK for about 30 seconds, then > goes down to a series of captions like: > > In the.. > But... > Hussein said that.. > then... > all of... = [remainder of quote skipped] Er, I haven't noticed that myself. You might try to bring it to the attention of the local station - It might be a local problem. If you are using an external antenna rather than cable, you might check that also. I've just moved and am getting poorer captioning on one station I got good captioning on before and much better captions on another (but unfortunatly, the "better" captions go past too fast in the local news. They snap four or five lines on the screen one at a time, the jerk all 5 off at once before I can read the last two!) -- Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!26!Stu.Turk Internet: Stu.Turk@f26.n129.z1.fidonet.org
Jack.O'keeffe@p0.f89.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Jack O'keeffe) (08/14/90)
Index Number: 9805
[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]
To: osmigo@emx.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan)
RM> As a rule, I'm constantly frustrated by the abysmal quality of
RM> the closed captioning during the evening news (Brokaw,
RM> Jennings, Rather).
Welcome to the club, Ron. Some of the gaffes are classic, but if
I wanted comedy I would be watching Jackie Gleason reruns.
Do you get the 'early' or the 'late' version of the network news?
The 'early' is captioned in realtime live and usually airs at 6:30 pm
eastern time. NCI attempts to clean up the mess for rebroadcast about
one-half hour later. We get the early CBS and ABC here, and the late
NBC. The difference is quite apparent.
I believe this problem will be with us to some extent as long as
the captioning process involves using court reporters on stenotype
machines attempting to write captions in realtime. Wouldn't the
precision of the captioning be better if the caption writer could
key captions in advance from the same script that the news reader
uses. All we'd miss then are Rather's ad-libs, and those I can
cheerfully do without.
Two of our TV broadcasters use quite a different system for captioning
local news. The caption text is extracted from the same teleprompter
script that the talking head reads. It works better and is much less
expensive than the network system. All we miss is live remote feeds
which are not scripted in advance for the teleprompter.
For a long time I thought that ABC did the best captioning job of any
of the three networks. But all of them seem to be slipping lately.
Maybe the first team is on vacation and the apprentice captioners
are working the summer programs.
RM> Is anyone else here seeing this? Please respond, as I'm preparing
RM> to contact ABC and/or the National Captioning Institute about it.
By all means, contact them. We'll not get quality unless we insist on
it. Let us know what they have to say.
BTW, I thing Jennings is the easiest to speechread, with Brokaw a
close second and Rather a distant third. It would be interesting
to have the opinion of other SilentTalkers on this. Let's take
a poll.
... Jack.
--
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