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From: osmigo@emx.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Problems with ABC's closed captions
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Date: 9 Aug 90 19:24:01 GMT
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Reply-To: osmigo@emx.utexas.edu (Ron Morgan)
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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