First letter from CBC (2005.12.08)

Edith Cody-Rice, Senior Legal Counsel

Direct: (613) 288-6164

Facsimile: (613) 288-6279

codyrice@ottawa.cbc.ca

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation – Law Department
P.O. Box 3220, Station C
181 Queen Street
Ottawa, ON K1Y 1E4
Telephone: (613) 288-6164
Facsimile: (613) 288-6279

K:\A Client Files-O\English TV\2003-00400 Closed Captioning – ETV_ECR\Complaint of Joe Clark\Response to CHRC\Final Document\LET 2005-12-08 ecr to P Dufresne re Clark complaint with logo.doc

December 8, 2005

DELIVERED VIA FACSIMILE

Mr. Philippe Dufresne,
Director and Senior Legal Counsel,
Canadian Human Rights Commission,
Floor 08,
344 Slater St.,
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 1E1

Dear Mr. Dufresne:

Re:

Closed Captioning – ETV

Our file Nº 2003-00400

This letter is in response to information received by CBC/Radio-Canada on November 16, 2005 regarding a complaint to the CHRC from Joe Clark, dated October 12, 2005, about closed captioning on CBC Television and CBC Newsworld.

As you know, Mr. Clark’s submission is quite lengthy and detailed. The CBC/Radio- Canada is still in the process of analyzing and researching it. However, in the interest of providing a timely response, we are sending you this interim reply now, with a more comprehensive and detailed answer to follow within approximately two weeks.

Mr. Clark contends that the networks have been seriously negligent in compliance with their obligation to caption 100% of telecasts, and submits significant detail in support of his claim.

The Corporation hereby reconfirms unequivocally its commitment to 100% captioning at the highest level of performance reasonably possible. For the past three years, CBC/Radio-Canada has taken many steps to institute and support the 100% captioning commitment. We believe that our level of performance in this area exceeds that of both closed captioning in the industry in general, and other presentation operations at the CBC/Radio-Canada. Nevertheless, CBC/Radio-Canada takes Mr. Clark’s complaint very seriously and will undertake a review of operations and practices to identify any reasonable opportunities for improvement.

Mr. Clark’s Complaint

By way of a preliminary response to the criticisms levelled by Mr. Clark, the Corporation would like to point out the following:

In 2002, CBC/Radio-Canada made a capital investment of $627,000 in support of the commitment to 100% closed captioning. The project involved the purchase of closed captioning equipment for Toronto and regional CBC/Radio-Canada stations. The associated incremental operating costs that arising from this are approximately $1.1M annually.

Processes were put in place that firmly entrenched the captioning commitment as a key priority in the networks’ presentation. Those processes include careful evaluation of incoming material for telecast, both from CBC/Radio-Canada and external sources, as well as formalized tracking and reporting of faults. Most recently, CBC/Radio-Canada has added an alarm system that alerts operators to technical failures in captioning, and we are reviewing our processes on a daily basis.

CBC/Radio-Canada established an in-house captioning group, staffed by fully qualified and trained captioners to assure the provision of captions on promos and other telecast material for which, for a variety of reasons, captioning by external providers is impractical or inefficient.

External captioning service providers, which supply the majority of CBC/Radio- Canada’s captioning, are carefully monitored for quality of service. They provide weekly reports detailing issues associated with faults and issues are addressed immediately.

Mr. Clark’s criticisms are organized in three categories: Missing Captions, Quality, and Interpretation. We briefly address each below. December 8, 2005 3

Missing Captions

Mr. Clark alleges 130 instances of absent captions. Without agreeing with this assessment, CBC/Radio-Canada considers that, if it were true, it would represent a remarkably strong record of performance, given the human and technical error to which closed captioning operations are reasonably subject.

These alleged findings must be put in context. CBC Newsworld broadcasts 24 hours a day and CBC/Radio-Canada’s main television service is on air an average of 135 hours per week. In total, the two networks telecast approximately 47,000 hours over three years, and that does not include the impact of multiple time zone releases for the main network. Mr. Clark states that the captioning absences are “typically remedied within a few minutes.” If we estimate each of his documented absences as 5 minutes in duration, then at 130 faults, the total time equals 10.8 hours or less than 1⁄4 of 1% (.023%) of the total telecast time in question. Surely this represents substantially complete compliance.

Quality

CBC/Radio-Canada shares Mr. Clark’s desire to deliver the highest possible quality of closed captioning to Canadians; however we believe that quality captioning, as Mr. Clark defines it, is impossible to achieve within the real-world broadcast environment and with finite resources.

Our captioning staff is professionally qualified and the work they turn out is, we contend, of a standard that meets or exceeds the highest industry standards. There appears to be a significant measure of satisfaction among the users of closed captioning. The CBC/Radio-Canada Audience Relations department has received only 26 complaints in relation to closed captioning between November 2002 and November 2005.

CBC/Radio-Canada’s manager responsible for closed captioning takes immediate action to source the problem, if she is not already aware of it, and frequently responds to the complainants personally, in the interest of assuring our viewers that closed captioning is a CBC/Radio-Canada priority.

A number of the specific issues that Mr. Clark identifies are judgment calls, about which there are various views within the captioning community itself. We will address each of them in more detail in our subsequent comprehensive response, however, one of his points can be addressed immediately. With regard to the recent CBC/Radio-Canada labour disruption, the operational challenges we faced were not limited to closed captioning. In fact, all aspects of our operations suffered. With dramatically reduced resources (i.e. 9 out of every 10 employees off the job, and many types of specialized expertise simply unavailable), CBC/Radio-Canada managers made Herculean efforts to maintain our commitment to 100% captioning at the best quality possible under this unique and challenging circumstance. We are proud of the level of performance achieved.

Interpretation

Mr. Clark alleges that CBC/Radio-Canada resents the requirement to caption and does not take it seriously. CBC/Radio-Canada disputes this claim most vehemently. A thorough investigation of the specific issues brought forward in the complaint is underway, and any potential opportunities for improvement will be identified and implemented.

As mentioned at the outset of this letter, we will provide a more detailed response to the complaints contained in Mr. Clark’s submission within approximately two weeks.

Yours very truly,
Edith Cody-Rice

cc

Ian Alexander

Heather Boyce

Brigitte Ouellet

ECR/vk