The survey looked at programs screened between 6am and midnight from 5 to 11 April 2014. During that period, the highest captioning percentage recorded on a commercial multichannel was 57 per cent on the Nine network’s Gem, while the lowest was 23 per cent on the Ten network’s One.
By contrast, captioning on the ABC’s three multichannel’s, ABC News 24, ABC2 and ABC3, stood at between 96 and 100 per cent.
Under current broadcasting regulations, the only programs which have to be captioned on multichannels are repeat programs which were originally captioned for screening on a network’s primary channel (such as Nine and Ten). This means that captioning levels on the multichannels are largely determined by the number of repeats. 7Two and 7Mate are doing the highest amount of captioning on first-run programs (including AFL matches and motorsport) while Neighbours is being captioned on Eleven.
A review of the multichannel captioning regulations was scheduled to commence before the end of 2012, but this did not take place. No further plans for the multichannels have been announced by the Australian Government since then.
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