Under the Broadcasting Services Act, the ACMA has the power to grant exemption or target reduction orders to television services if providing captions for them would cause ‘unjustifiable hardship’. This is the reason that the ACMA has given for granting a draft exemption order for Baby TV and a draft target reduction order for Nat Geo Wild, Both of which are channels offered on the subscription service Fetch TV. In its submissions, Fetch TV noted that it had no captioning infrastructure in place, and the cost of providing captions would likely result in the removal of these channels from its service.
Further draft exemption and target reduction orders will be posted in the next few days. Once a draft order is posted, submissions concerning it can be made to the ACMA within 30 days.
The draft orders and associated documents can be downloaded from the Draft Exemption orders for applications received page of the ACMA’s website.
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