Initial reports suggest that switch-off has gone fairly smoothly, although some two hundred people on remote farms are reported to be currently without a digital signal. This should be rectified in two weeks, when a satellite service will be available to them.
Channel 4 in the UK has announced that it will increase audio description (AD) to 20% of all programming on the channels it owns, including Channel 4, More 4, E4 and Film 4.
The increase on Channel 4 will be brought about by the audio description of two popular programs, Hollyoaks and Deal or No Deal, by September 2010. The remaining channels will increase to 20% by January 2011. Channel 4 is also gearing up for the audio description of the 2012 Paralympic Games.
Ofcom conducted a periodic review of access services and generally opted for the status quo in how captioning (called subtitling in the UK), AD and sign language should be treated. There was no overall change to the general approach to how the need for access services is determined, including the regime of allowing smaller channels to opt out of providing sign language on programs in return for helping fund sign language programming on community TV.
With the audio description quotas, three options were looked at:
1. Keeping it at maximum 10%.
ASTRA has been asked to:
· Provide details of ASTRA members’ profit, and the amount spent on captioning, for the year 2009-2010, to support its contention that ‘an obligation to caption all programming on all channels would be financially prohibitive’.
· Comment on the proposal in several submissions that the ASTRA members spend 1% of annual turnover on captioning.
· Provide information about how the percentages of captioning proposed for each channel under an exemption agreement were determined.
