CBC captioning errors and omissions:
An ongoing list

Instead of keeping ongoing notes and saving them up for a rainy day, from now on I’ll be posting my results at least once a month. There’s an RSS feed available if you’re interested.

(New to this issue? CBC Television and Newsworld have a 100% captioning requirement – every second of the broadcast day has to be captioned. But it isn’t. I’ve published evidence demonstrating that – and I’ll continue publishing such evidence.)

All listings in reverse chronological order by month.

Post-2010

Things are slightly better, I must say.

2011.05.30 00:31: Hockey Night in Canada Classics from 1989 has real-time captioning.

2010

April 2010

All is right in CBC captioning? No. Nothing’s changed. And, as of 2010.04.12 00:31, they’re back to real-time-captioning ancient hockey game (Game 7, Stanley Cup Final 2009, Detroit–Pittsburgh).

2010.05.03 00:31: 1994 Canucks/Rangers Staneley Cup final actually has prereocorded scrollup captioning in mixed case.

2009

August 2009

2009.08.18 01:03

(Scrollup)

Man Without a Face yet again rerererun with scrollup captions that clobber subtitles or just float there.

2009.08.04 01:00

(Real-time)

Canada Rocks the Capital, a rerun from (apparently) last July 1, stupidly shown with original real-time captions. Sarah McLachlan goes mostly uncaptioned in the short segment I watches.

July 2009

2009.07.26 02:47

All the President’s Men rerun with scrollup.

March 2009

2009.03.10 01:00

(Scrollup)

The Goodbye Girl is yet again rerun with scrollup captioning.

February 2009

2009.02.25 17:45

(Missing captions)

Promo for CBC News at Six uncaptioned

2009.02.23 00:35

(Real-time)

Hockey Day in Canada rerun two days after Hockey Day with the same real-time captions

2009.02.18 18:01

(Missing captions)

Disembodied voice announcing “Your local news is next” now says “You’re watching… CBC!” and it isn’t captioned anymore.

2009.02.12 17:57

(Missing captions)

Another promo for CBC News at Six uncaptioned.

2009.02.09 17:12

(Missing captions)

Four promos for CBC News at Six uncaptioned (that is, all of them between 5:00 and airtime).

January

2009.01.21 18:01

Wheel of Fortune, and at least the last promo, captioned in scrollup. It’s as if all prerecorded captioning crashed.

2008

November

2008.11.27 18:02

(Missing captions)

Teleprompter captions on CBC News at Six, including no captions on a live throw or its subsequent prerecorded item. Real-time captions started at 18:02.

2008.11.20 21:33

(Other)

CBC captioning switched back to all upper case, as seen on many promos. (Numbers under ten are suddenly written as numerals, even at the beginning of a sentence.)

2008.11.21 18:01: The caption inserted over the very last credit of Wheel of Fortune is now rendered as YOUR LOCAL NEWS IS NEXT (one version of at least three that were previously given in mixed case).

October

2008.10.31 16:54

(Missing captions)

Promo for CBC Radio 1 640 AM St. John’s morning show (yes) and Heartland uncaptioned. Also The Point and one other. Was in a figure-skating show, so obviously an encoder-pass-through problem.

September

2008.09.23 18:00

(Missing captions)

(Real-time)

Teleprompter captioning, and none for standup and first segment, until 2008.09.23 18:03, when real-time kicked in.

2008.09.08 18:01

(Missing captions)

(Real-time)

Promo for Dragons’ Den uncaptioned at end of today’s very first episode of Wheel of Fortune, which used real-time captioning. Then CBC News at Six started up with Teleprompter captioning. 2½ full out-of-studio segments, 1½ live, were uncaptioned. Real-time captioning didn’t start till 2008.09.08 18:05.

August

2008.08.09 18:50

“Closed captioning is brought to you by Aquafina+ vitamin-enhanced water” uncaptioned. Promo for The Tudors less than 10 minutes previous was also uncaptioned. Incidentally, Radio-Canada is captioning essentially nothing in its Olympic coverage.

July

2008.07.03 01:03

(Subtitling with captioning)

Jean de Florette hardsubbed and uncaptioned (including theme music and unsubtitled utterance).

June 2008

2008.07.23 18:00

(Missing captions)

No captions on CBC News at Six; 3 appeared at 18:02. Resumed 18:03.

2008.06.04 23:44

(Missing captions)

Ten or more minutes of Hockey Night in Canada, featuring dozens of players and coaches addressing the camera, naming themselves and their birthplaces, and stating their favourite players growing up, uncaptioned. Instantly thereafter, an extro by Ron MacLean was captioned. After a few commercial breaks, extro music (a famous disco single, “Cure for This” by Remedy, with easily-understood lyrics) was uncaptioned.

March

2008.02.11 18:11

(Missing captions)

No captions at all on CBC News at Six until 2008.02.11 18:14.

February

2008.03.13 18:04

Nothing but Teleprompter captioning on CBC News at Six until 2008.03.13 18:06.

2007

December 2007

2007.12.26 17:59

(Real-time)

A Gospel Christmas on CBC (second time this week) with real-time

November 2007

There’s a separate post available: “CBC captioning atrocity update.”

July

Most recent additions

2007.07.03 18:03

(Scrollup)

Yet more Teleprompter captioning on CBC News at Six. Real-time captioning didn’t start until 2007.07.03 18:04.

2007.07.10 13:15

(Scrollup)

“Totally Toronto” segment uses Teleprompter captioning. It misses the first word. All utterances are run together in one paragraph. Interviews are prefaced with [Observations from onlookers:] and one child’s use of the verb “he’s gotten” is rendered with [sic]. All utterances from interview subjects are rendered inside quotation marks. There seems to be no upper limit on the number of spaces after a sentence-ending period.

June 2007

2007.06.04 16:52

(Missing captions)

No captions on Newsworld promo for CBC Country Canada’s June free preview. Then, 2007.06.04 16:53, no captions on a promo for CBC.CA. Real-time captions resumed on subsequent newscast.

2007.06.26 18:02

(Real-time)

CBC News at Six used Teleprompter captioning, with numerous errors. Then threw to Meterologist Natasha Ramsahai (initial cap sic), then a blank line, then “Bottom line. It is hot.” Weather report uncaptioned. First live report uncaptioned. Real-time captioning didn’t start until 2007.06.26 18:04.

2007.06.28 18:01

(Real-time)

Same as yesterday, but the Teleprompter captioning lasted less than a minute.

2007.06.29 02:06

(Scrollup)

20h17 rue Darling has scrollup captions for NSI that, of course, cover up subtitles.

May 2007

2007.05.21 01:13

(Real-time)

Vintage Stanley Cup game, apparently from 1989, captioned in real time on CBC. They’ve done this four times before in the last month.

2007.05.31 18:11

(Real-time)

CBC News at Six report showing an eyewitness quoting Mike Harris as saying “I want the fucking Indians out of the park” rendered the curse as [BLEEP] even though it was clearly audible (something I’ve seen many times – quit hiring fundamentalist Christians as stenocaptioners).

2007.05.08 16:55

(Missing captions)

In its dinky little Toronto update before The Simpsons on CBC, Teleprompter captioning is used, which only vaguely relates to the actual dialogue. But weather updates are not captioned at all – a vestige of the days before real-time captioning and a signal deficiency of ENR captioning. (Also happened yesterday.)

2007.05.08 16:56

(Missing captions)

Weather-update promo from Husqvarna uncaptioned on CBC.

2007.05.08 16:57

(Caption error)

CBCShop.ca misrendered as cbc.shop.ca.

2007.05.07

(Caption error)

All afternoon yesterday, a promo for The Hour misrendered Hugh Dillon’s name as Hugh Dylan.

February 2007

2007.02.20 18:00

(Real-time)

No captions on CBC News at Six, then Teleprompter captions, then none. Real-time captions come back only at 2007.02.20 18:02.

2007.02.14 18:01

(Real-time)

Again on CBC News at Six we have Teleprompter captions (also ending with 33 33 33) until two minutes in, when real-time captions begin. Captions crashed completely at 18:28.

2007.02.16 01:13

(Real-time)

Repeat of the Brit Awards. The event happened just over a day previous; audio would have been available live for pretranscription. Instead, they used real-time captioning, and simply did not bother to caption the songs. At all. [Unless you consider ( ♪♪ Singing ♪♪ ) a caption.] British accents are apparently (indiscernible), and names of presenters are left off. Nor did they clean it up for this repeat. And it was exactly the same last year.

January 2007

2007.01.01 02:49

Second instalment of 49 Up (re-edited to include an entire participant CBC had edited out) uses real-time captioning; previous night’s instalment used live-display.

2007.01.01 02:49

(Missing captions)

No captions on Creative Block on Newsworld.

2007.01.02 13:28

(Missing captions)

Promo for Lottery on Ice on Newsworld aired without captions.

2007.01.03 01:49

(Scrollup)

Yet another repeat of Changi captioned in centred scrollup.

2007.01.25 02:09

(Subtitling with captioning)

A Time for Drunken Horses – surely CBC’s first Kurdish-language film – has tons of non-speech information and unsubtitled utterances, but no captioning.

2006

December 2006

2006.12.17 21:59

(Missing captions)

Extro from documentary Bowling for Columbine to news break uncaptioned on Newsworld. (In fact, the last caption from the movie hung there in suspension.)

2006.12.23 03:30

(Missing captions)

Rerun of CBC News at Six (Toronto edition) has no captions for first minute, then teleprompter captions (really), then real-time captions, then none on first segment, then teleprompter captioning again, then TEST TEST TEST TEST. It’s like 1987 with the teleprompter captioning. Then I went to bed.

2006.12.24 18:14

(Scrollup)

A Gospel Christmas Celebration captioned in scrollup, but the show does not seem live. Hark, the Harold angels sing! Or are they just [ SINGING ] or [ ♪ ♪ ♪ ]?Also, one of the singers looks like, and wears as much makeup as, Little Richard. And she’s a girl. (Another episode seen the next day. No change.)

2006.12.25 18:43

(Missing captions)

A promo that thanks advertisers for “supporting” closed captioning – “enabling thousands of Canadians” to better understand programming – airs without captions. (Seen on Creature Comforts, replete with misspellings like “the forth day of Christmas” and it’s for its; they also captioned it in scrollup. Seen again 2006.12.28 00:27.)

2006.12.27 19:08

(Missing captions)

Totally Toronto segment has no captions whatsoever, not even from a teleprompter.

November 2006

2006.11.02 01:28

(Subtitling with captioning)

Chinese-language subtitled movie Little Cheung, with frequent sound effects and occasional interspersed English, uncaptioned.

2006.11.03 18:01

(Missing captions)

CBC News at Six begins with captioning from the Teleprompter (!) in upper and lower case with solid black spaces. After the intro to the first story, the only caption is 33 a dozen or more times on individual lines. No real-time captioning at all. Then TEST TEST twice. Real-time captions begin 2006.11.03 18:02. Of course, due to poor preparation on CBC’s part, the stenocaptioner does not have any of the director or actor names of Babel in the dictionary, save of course for Brad Pitt and Kate Winslet.

2006.11.07 19:08

(Anomaly)

Promo for CBC Radio’s Totally Toronto, shot outside on Danforth Ave., uses Teleprompter captions in mixed case that race by and do not really completely match the dialogue. This makes little sense, as the Teleprompter was probably not dragged out in a van to the Danforth. Last word and line are slightly mangled.

2006.11.13 00:48

(Real-time)

Rerun of CBC Sports Saturday still, after years of complaining, simply reuses the original real-time captioning on a show that is only occasionally live. Tonight, the sentence beginning “A blast from the past” and including the name of the old gymnast Vitaly Shcherbo could only be captioned as “A blast from the past.” Still think real-time captioning is sufficient?

2006.11.14 02:06

(Real-time)

In further evidence that the CBC misuses real-time captioning for programs that demonstrably are not live, Grey Cup Classic Games airs a scratchy black-and-white kinescope from the 1950s with – wait for it – real-time captioning. Still think there aren’t any problems?

2006.11.15 01:22

(Real-time)

Let’s do it again: Grey Cup Classics (apparent actual title) runs a scratchy black-and-white kinescope from 1968 (Pierre Trudeau present in the stands), again with real-time captioning. 38 years isn’t enough time to caption a football game?

2006.11.17 00:22

(Scrollup)

Well, look who’s back: The Goodbye Girl captioned with scrollup with innumerable blank lines, just as it was on 2004.12.10. You don’t think two years is enough time to do pop-ons?

2006.11.23 02:26

(Subtitling with captioning)

Even after Nugget at Dignan and Anthony blogged about captioning it and how super-easy it is to caption subtitled movies, lo and behold, the subtitled movie Hero aired without captions.

2006.11.29 01:45

(Subtitling with captioning)

Tibetan movie Himalaya uncaptioned. Lots of cowbells and hollering in the distance.

October 2006

2006.10.03 18:26

(Caption error)

Promo for Antiques Roadshow misrenders a numeric range: BETWEEN $70 and $75 THOUSAND. This is one of the basic concepts of captioning, people. (Tell me: Was the item worth $71?)

2006.10.13 00:05

Newsworld repeat of Dragon’s Den reuses the original real-time captions. The program was shot over the summer and never should have been real-timed in the first place; it is demonstrably not live. The repeat, however, live-displayed the collected captions, complete with errors (like leaving off one of the panelists’ names). The pace of the captions made it seem like the live-display was being carried out live, and that no one had bothered to check the transcript for accuracy before doing so. This is yet another example of CBC’s fucking up when trying to remedy one of its fuckups.

2006.10.13 12:31

(Caption error)

Promo on Newsworld for Jozi-H misrenders “Can you tube him?” as “Can you take him?” (Tube as in intubate.)

September 2006

2006.09.02

Bumpers before commercials on Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (or, as CBC commercials called it, 'STAR WARS,' EPISODE TWO, 'ATTACK OF THE CLONES' [mispronounced as “clowns”]) have the announcer saying “Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones will be right back on CBC”; the caption reads OUIR PRESENTATION WILL BE RIGHT BACK ON CBC.

2006.09.07 16:29

(Missing captions)

Promo for Why We Fight on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.09.12 01:09

(Subtitling with captioning)

It’s almost superfluous to note this, as subtitled movies are normally uncaptioned, but The Far Side of the Moon also is uncaptioned. Lots of unsubtitled utterances, songs, ringing phones, and the like. And again typically, the bumpers at commercial breaks were captioned.

2006.09.12 01:15

(Missing captions)

Promo for Wagner’s Ring uncaptioned.

2006.09.13 00:59

(Missing captions)

Intro to My Left Foot uncaptioned.

2006.09.22 00:49

(Scrollup)

Zed, a perennial trouble spot that is especially concerning because it’s been cancelled, has a segment on Japanese cellphone usage with a Japanese-accented English-speaker. He is subtitled some of the time, other times not. He uses a few words that stenocaptioners in Canada could not reasonably have in their dictionaries, like DoCoMo. It is nothing short of absurd to use real-time captioning for a repeat episode of a cancelled program that was not and is not live and that is presenting a taped segment from another country.

2006.09.22 01:19

Earth, one of Deepa Mehta’s wildly overrated and excruciatingly boring tetraology of “Canadian” films, has no captions during a subtitled segment with extensive music. Fire last week merely used ellipsis for any words the captioner didn’t understand; on Earth the words are simply left out.

2006.09.23 00:14

(Scrollup)

In some respects, the movie that started it all: CBC reruns The Mexican with scrollup captions, just like last time (2004.11.14) even though the movie was captioned for first-run cinema and VHS and DVD with pop-on captions and CBC had nearly two years to recaption it in pop-on.

August 2006

2006.08.03

(Subtitling with captioning)

German-language movie The Harmonists has oodles of unsubtitled singing, music, and ringing telephones.

2006.08.03

(Anomaly)

CFL promo with incorrect paint-ons seen again (less than two minutes after writing the previous entry).

2006.08.07 11:45

(Caption error)

THE INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE, like many italicized phrases in CBC captioning, is actually not italicized.

2006.08.08

(Missing captions)

Promo for Planet Earth uncaptioned on Newsworld.

2006.08.15

(Missing captions)

CBC News at Six has no captions for first two minutes save for ç;ç;ç;ç;ç;.

July

2006.07.01 13:05

(Caption error)

CBC Canada Day special shows bands energetically playing, but with the CBC’s traditional copout caption (♪♪ Singing ♪♪).

2006.07.04 20:39

(Caption error)

Promo for Nature of Things lists an upcoming episode as 'GLOSTS OF NATURES PAST' – i.e., with errant British single quotation marks, which will appear in many analogue fonts as ’GLOSTS OF NATURES PAST’. Episodes of series are enclosed in double quotes; this ain’t England.

2006.07.05 01:21

(Scrollup)

British historical drama Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot (sic) captioned, inevitably, in scrollup, with numerous errant blank lines. The line “Fear not Bothwell, you will never see them again” means something rather unintended.

2006.07.05 13:00

(Missing captions)

Promo for CBC News Tonight on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.07.06 01:25

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Ju Dou has no captions, even for sound effects like a hidden child revealing herself by whimpering and gongs striking and music playing during a parade.

2006.07.07 00:08

(Real-time)

Zed (a perennial trouble spot) runs an indie film about a Palestinian heart surgeon. The filmmakers act as though his English is incomprehensible and open-caption it. The real-time captioners dubmly recaption that dialogue, ages behind the utterances and replete with errors and omissions.

2006.07.10 21:28

(Caption error)

Getting Along Famously has seriously slipshod mom-’n’-pop captioning, including the humdinger of rendering «Je suis un homme d’amour» as Je suis un homme de mort.

2006.07.10 21:57

(Caption error)

Promo for Cold Mountain writes it as 'COLD MOUNTAIN' (again with the British single quotation marks), uses a semicolon for a colon, and uses a comma instead of a period at sentence end. Bravo, CBC! But I have a punchline: I saw a similar, if not identical, promo on 2006.07.12 14:41 that was fine.

2006.07.12 21:34

(Caption error)

Voice-over and captioning on commercial extros (the little bumpers that lead into commercial breaks) on Hustle do not match. Thecaptionis always THIS CBC SPECIAL PRESENTATION WILL BE BACK IN A MOMENT (with that godawful italicized “CBC”); the voiceover is variously “Watch your back: Hustle will return in a moment” or “Watch carefully: Hustle will be right back on CBC.”

2006.07.13 0:02

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Kolya has no apparent captions, particularly for the moment in which an opera singer hits a wrong note and everybody in the hall turns and looks. Also doesn’t caption a wolf whistle, but does caption [HORN HONKING]. Extro before commercial did not have its usual pointless and uninformative caption ♪ ♪, allegedly to indicate “music.” Also [PLAYING THE PIANO (sic) later.

2006.07.13 14:52

(Caption error)

Promo for 49th and Main has an old battleaxe growling lustily à la Homer Simpson, which is merely captioned as [groaning].

2006.07.13 14:54

(Caption error)

Promo for The Ring begins with Chyroned and spoken phrase “To avoid any confusion,” which is captioned as >> Announcer: TO AVOID...

2006.07.14 1:41

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Maelstrom has no captions, even on lengthy musical segments and equally lengthy segments with no dialogue and significant sound effects. Then, ages later (1:54), a single caption: ♪ [eerie], followed right away by a Chinese-language segment uncaptioned as such.

2006.07.14 18:15

(Caption error)

Real-time captioners for Toronto CBC News at Six never have all the correspondents’ names in their dictionaries (a perennial problem in the ’90s across the network). An intro including Mychaylo Prystupa’s name was captioned merely as AND AS WE HEAR IN THIS REPORT, i.e., they cheated.

2006.07.17 18:16

(Caption error)

And here we go again with a failure to include reporters’ names in the dictionary for CBC News at Six. Tonight, the dead-simple “Kyle Brown has the story” was rendered as WE HAVE THE STORY.

2006.07.18 15:30

(Caption error)

Yet another complete recaptioning – using first a three-line paint-on – of a disclaimer warning at the beginning of the program. Which program? 49th and Main. Do you think I’m going to complain to the Human Rights Commission if you don’t duplicate in captions what already duplicates the words of the announcer in text?

2006.07.18 15:37

(Caption error)

49th and Main has two captions (speaker names deleted):

• speaking Punjabi, saying "Doctor"
• speaking Punjabi, saying "Doctor?"

The last words of those sentences were in fact “doktor” or equivalent. But the promo aired within this program for this program has both characters saying NEW DOCTOR? NEW DOCTOR. So was it translatable or not?

2006.07.19 14:35

(Caption error)

More on 49th and Main: Apparently, in multicultural Vancouver, the famous hamburger restaurant is called MacDONALD'S. Also, a BMW is a Bimmer, not a Beamer.

2006.07.20 00:35

(Subtitling with captioning)

Va savoir has the quintessential French subtitling scenario: Two characters saying something we’re supposed to understand. «M. Denis?» «Oui.» (No subtitles.) The next line is subtitled as “Please come in.” (I’m approximating the names and such.) Then later, a woman talks on the phone and subtitling doesn’t kick in until the second sentence. And in neither of those cases was there any captioning, either. Music in a ballet class isn’t captioned. Neither was a sneeze or a ringing doorbell. Yet the extros, saying “We will return with Va savoir on CBC,” were captioned (errantly italicizing CBC as usual).

2006.07.20 17:32

(Missing captions)

Promo for CBC News: Face to Face on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.07.20 17:48

(Missing captions)

Two promos – one for Fifth Estate, one for The National – on Newsworld uncaptioned. (Other promos in this program captioned.)

2006.07.23 21:02

(Caption error)

And here we go again with a mismatch between announcements and captioning. Captions on extros for The Ring all read THIS CBC SPECIAL PRESENTATION WILL BE BACK IN A MOMENT but the voiceover was variously “The Ring will be back in a moment” or “You’re watching The Ring on CBC.” (Despite many opportunities to jot down the voiceovers verbatim, I may be trivially incorrect in transcription.) Also, stop italicizing “CBC.”

2006.07.24 12:32

(Missing captions)

Newsworld promo for A Knock on the Door uncaptioned.

2006.07.26 00:12

(Missing captions)

Christopher Eccleston’s “CBC Television is proud to present Doctor Who” extro uncaptioned. And the whole fucking thing is in all-caps scrollup (even speaker IDs), seconds behind the dialogue and a complete disaster. Later: “Are you sitting comfortably? Doctor Who will return on CBC” also uncaptioned.

2006.07.27 00:35

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Satin Rouge has all sorts of non-speech information and unsubtitled dialogue, all without captions.

2006.07.28 18:13

(Missing captions)

Promo for national Canada Now uncaptioned on CBC News at Six.

2006.07.28 evening

(Scrollup)

Jaws is captioned in scrollup. CBC has had 25 years to source a properly-captioned tape or to do the captioning itself. A CFL promo used paint-on captions that painted right over the unmoving previous captions.

June

2009.06.11 18:47

(Missing captions)

Promo for CBC News at Six uncaptioned. (No interstitials for the show are ever captioned.)

2006.06.01 00:26

(Subtitling with captioning)

Spanish-language song in All About My Mother uncaptioned.

2006.06.11 15:25

(Real-time)

HNIC Classic is a series that runs ancient hockey games, as from the ’80s. And they use real-time captioning.

2006.06.28 00:26

(Scrollup)

Doctor Who repeated with original scrollup captioning (in errant British English).

2006.06.28 12:46

(Caption error)

Promo for The Canadian Guitar calls it “a truely Canadian guitar.”

2006.06.28 12:46

Promo for Life and Times renders the title of an episode as "THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EL NINO" – not italics (correct) and not Ñ (incorrect).

2006.06.29 00:47

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Four Days in September has scrollup captions for English, sound effects. Lots of errant blank lines. This produced the clash of pop-on subtitles in mixed case and scrollup captions in upper case.

2006.06.30 00:41

(Real-time)

Zed is a rerun and shows K-Os (always captioned as “Chaos”) practising with the CBC Radio Orchestra. Real-time captions remain as inaccurate as in the original airing, with many blank lines and so many missed words (including “maestro” and “tabla”) that many sentences are incomprehensible. Many minutes of calm, melodic, unraplike singing passed with almost no captions. A rap artist singing with a symphony orchestra is no kind of show to real-time-caption.

2006.06.30 01:24

(Caption error)

Disclaimer before movie warning that viewer discretion is advised has all words Chyroned onscreen and also recaptioned.

2006.06.30 13:00

(Missing captions)

Promo for The Queen at 80 on Newsworld uncaptioned.

May

2006.05.09 19:01

(Missing captions)

Entire first skit before credits on This Hour Has 22 Minutes uncaptioned, then the punchline real-timed.

2006.05.18 18:53

(Missing captions)

Promo on Canada Now for The National appears suddenly (one second or so into the video) and takes everybody by surprise, hence has no real-time captioning.

2006.05.20

(Real-time)

CBC Sport Saturday reruns two events from the Turin Olympics with real-time captioning.

2006.05.23 18:50

(Missing captions)

Promo on Canada Now for The National has no real-time captioning.

April

2006.04.07 01:10

(Subtitling with captioning)

Subtitled movie Québec–Montréal has scrollup captions for music and non-speech information, and the captions don’t clear; they just scroll up. [rattling cap of tank] as we see a man obviously twisting off the cap. ALLO? and >> HEIN? sit there superimposed over subtitles.

March

2006.03.11 18:18

(Missing captions)

Tommy Douglas promo on CBC uncaptioned.

2006.03.14 17:41

(Missing captions)

Two consecutive Newsworld promos uncaptioned.

2006.03.14 17:56

(Missing captions)

Another Newsworld promo uncaptioned.

2006.03.21 4:45 PM

(Missing captions)

Generic newsworld promo uncaptioned.

2006.03.31 11:58

(Missing captions)

Address by Vicente Fox uncaptioned. However, the English interpreter was low in the mix and had a strange voice, being nearly incomprehensible. Captions come on at 2006.03.31 12:01.

February

2006.02.02 17:20

(Missing captions)

Promo for The Hour on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.02.02 17:42

(Missing captions)

Two consecutive promos, including one for The Lens, uncaptioned.

2006.02.02 17:55

(Missing captions)

Passionate Eye promo uncaptioned. That makes three commercial breaks in a row with no captioning (also not on any commercials I saw, though I didn’t see all of them). But, three minutes later, a Fifth Estate and a generic Newsworld promo were both captioned within that same break.

2006.02.09 18:53

(Missing captions)

Identical promo for Neil Young interview runs twice within three minutes, once with scrollup captions, once with none.

2006.02.13 11:26

(Missing captions)

Promo for Olympic news updates uncaptioned on Newsworld.

2006.02.13 11:29

(Missing captions)

Promo for Ross Rebagliati special uncaptioned. Presumably encoder pass-through in these two cases.

2006.02.13 11:29

(Missing captions)

Opening by newscaster captioned; intro to Olympic recap from previous years uncaptioned; actual recap captioned. Took the stenotypist by surprise, apparently.

2006.02.18 2100

(Missing captions)

No captions on Don Cherry.

2006.02.22 ≈11:30

(Caption error)

Olympic men’s hockey game between USA and Finland has apparently no player names, not even Chelios, in the dictionary (exception: Hatcher), misspells Finns as “Fins” consistently, and never captions play-by-play, only colour. Caption left margin is also more than halfway across the screen even though the score bug is at most two tab stops wide.

2006.02.26 15:09

(Missing captions)

CBC promo for video-on-demand service uncaptioned.

2006.02.26 15:10

(Other)

Nonsensical and contradictory captioning “sponsorship” from XM Satellite Radio airs with captions.

January

2006.01.10 17:50

(Missing captions)

Bumper uncaptioned on Canada Now on CBNT. Earlier, a streeter aired before Hanomansing came back on was uncaptioned, no doubt due to surprise.

2006.01.12 00:28

(Missing captions)

Bumper to International Movie Night uncaptioned. Neither was the movie, Blue.

2006.01.19 11:59

(Missing captions)

Paul Martin stump speech interpreted from French on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.01.20 17:55

(Missing captions)

Promo for Canada Votes on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2006.01.28 18:32

(Missing captions)

Entire opening for Hockey Night in Canada uncaptioned, including the first two interviews.

2006.01.31 00:21

(Subtitling with captioning)

La vie, la vie has captioned bumper explaining it’s the last episode, which goes on to run the entire Trudeau “Just watch me” speech uncaptioned, among a host of other captionable effects.

2005

2005.10.13 12:53

(Missing captions)

No captions on Washington segment on Newsworld or entire following business segment. First commercial does, however, have captions.

2005.10.20 17:21

(Missing captions)

Two promos on Newsworld uncaptioned.

2005.10.24 16:51

(Missing captions)

Captioning appears and disappears on breaking-news item. Susan Bonner also cannot always hear Christopher Thomas at her studio in Ottawa. The item ends with the following:

• “Thanks, Christopher. Sorry about the audio problems.”
• “Hey, it’s live.”
• “It happens.”

And of course that entire interchange had no captions.

2005.10.24 18:46

(Caption error)

Toronto news does not render the URL in the line “You can get more information by visiting their Web site, P2E.ca” even though it’s absurdly simple. It’s just uncaptioned.

2005.10.26 23:33

(Subtitling with captioning)

Strawberry and Chocolate uncaptioned (and “hardsubbed,” i.e., with burned-in film subtitles).

2005.11.04 18:41

(Missing captions)

Making the Grade promo inside Toronto version of Canada Now not captioned.

2005.11.09 19:25

(Missing captions)

Cinema Real Docfest/Whistler Contest promo uncaptioned on Newsworld.

2005.11.15 12:20

(Missing captions)

Promo for Politics uncaptioned (and seen while I was sending out the press release on uncaptioned programs on CBC).

2005.11.21 14:00

(Missing captions)

Promo on Newsworld for Secret Mulroney Tapes (previously seen captioned at least twice) uncaptioned.

2005.12.01 00:34

(Subtitling with captioning)

Our Lady of the Assassins has (crappy Arial) subtitles but no captions, including in extended segment in which a jukebox plays an unsubtitled song. Later: “Kio! Turn the music down a bit!” What music? I didn’t read any music.

2005.12.07 18:26

(Missing captions)

Bumper for The National uncaptioned. There was an unusual pause before running it; no doubt the stenocaptioners were caught by surprise.

2005.12.09 18:26

(Missing captions)

Promo for “Taxi Chat” segment on The National uncaptioned until the last seconds, where the only caption was Announcer: and a few garbled characters.

2005.12.13 2212

(Missing captions)

Discover Wild Canada promo uncaptioned

2005.12.14 2325

(Subtitling with captioning)

Intro to In the Mood for Love uncaptioned (as are all intros and extros to late-night movies)

2002–2005

Read the full original list of captioning errors and omissions.

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Updated: 2011.05.30 13:07