The Federal
Communications Commission's Telecommunications Act of 1996 "CC" policy
was enforced in January 2006 and there will be many stations with strict CC requirements. Make sure
you find out the station's CC pre-requisites before you ship those infomercials off to them or they will
reject your project if it is not CC-ready.
In January 2006, the FCC required all programming broadcasters to provide at least 450 hours
of closed-captioned material per yearly quarter, or 5 hours of closed-captioning per day. If the station
you are submitting to is already satisfying the 450 hour quota, then you do not have to worry about
adding CCs on your project. If your project is less than 5 minutes in length or is airing between the
hours of 2am and 6am, you also do not have to worry about Closed-Captions.
There's even better news for first-time markets. If the station you will be airing on is making
less than 3 million dollars of annual revenue, you do not have to submit Closed-Captions.
Nevertheless, if all signs point to Closed-Captions, it really isn't the end of the world. The
closed-captioning process isn't as complicated or expensive as you may think. There are some
companies that will make the conversion for as little as $400 to $1000 per half hour shows. The
process of captioning and encoding generally takes about 5-7 business days.
ADVANTAGES OF CLOSED-CAPTIONING
* The National Captioning Institute research show that the closed-caption market
includes 24 million individuals who are either deaf or hearing impaired.
* From that pool of consumers, there are 3.7 million remedial readers, 27 million illiterate
adults who are learning to read and 30 million people who are learning to speak and read English.
*This means that the total additional population closed-captioned DRTV programming
may reach is 84.7 million TV viewers.
* The National Captioning Institute also reports that 66 percent of this market is more likely to
buy products advertised with captions, 53 percent makes a special effort to look for products
advertised with captions and 35 percent will change brands to buy a product advertised with captions
instead of one that is not.
* Closed-Captioned Infomercials may also reach viewers in noisy places where it may otherwise be
impossible to hear the content of the programming.
Learn more about Infomercial Production
was enforced in January 2006 and there will be many stations with strict CC requirements. Make sure
you find out the station's CC pre-requisites before you ship those infomercials off to them or they will
reject your project if it is not CC-ready.
In January 2006, the FCC required all programming broadcasters to provide at least 450 hours
of closed-captioned material per yearly quarter, or 5 hours of closed-captioning per day. If the station
you are submitting to is already satisfying the 450 hour quota, then you do not have to worry about
adding CCs on your project. If your project is less than 5 minutes in length or is airing between the
hours of 2am and 6am, you also do not have to worry about Closed-Captions.
There's even better news for first-time markets. If the station you will be airing on is making
less than 3 million dollars of annual revenue, you do not have to submit Closed-Captions.
Nevertheless, if all signs point to Closed-Captions, it really isn't the end of the world. The
closed-captioning process isn't as complicated or expensive as you may think. There are some
companies that will make the conversion for as little as $400 to $1000 per half hour shows. The
process of captioning and encoding generally takes about 5-7 business days.
ADVANTAGES OF CLOSED-CAPTIONING
* The National Captioning Institute research show that the closed-caption market
includes 24 million individuals who are either deaf or hearing impaired.
* From that pool of consumers, there are 3.7 million remedial readers, 27 million illiterate
adults who are learning to read and 30 million people who are learning to speak and read English.
*This means that the total additional population closed-captioned DRTV programming
may reach is 84.7 million TV viewers.
* The National Captioning Institute also reports that 66 percent of this market is more likely to
buy products advertised with captions, 53 percent makes a special effort to look for products
advertised with captions and 35 percent will change brands to buy a product advertised with captions
instead of one that is not.
* Closed-Captioned Infomercials may also reach viewers in noisy places where it may otherwise be
impossible to hear the content of the programming.
Learn more about Infomercial Production