Channel 4 Found in Breach of Subtitle Regulations by U.K. Media Regulator
variety.comNaman Ramachandran U.K. media regulator Ofcom has found broadcaster Channel 4 in breach of regulations over a subtitle outage that occurred in 2021.In Sept.
2021, as a result of an incident at a broadcast centre run by Red Bee Media, Freesat audiences who rely on subtitles were unable to fully access Channel 4 programs for nearly two months.
This resulted in Channel 4 falling short of its annual quota to subtitle 90% of programs on Freesat, achieving only 85.41%, which is in breach of its licence conditions.Ofcom received around 500 complaints and launched an investigation earlier this year. “Given this prolonged outage, the Channel 4 service fell short of the statutory requirement to subtitle 90% of its programme hours over 2021 on the Freesat service,” Ofcom said in a statement. “Ofcom also found that Channel 4 breached another condition of its licence by failing to effectively communicate with affected audiences about the availability of access services in the weeks following the incident.” Ofcom found “serious failings and delays” in Channel 4’s communications with affected audiences, saying that “Deaf viewers were likely to be among those most impacted by the outage, but Channel 4 did not provide any information to viewers in British Sign Language until Oct.
15, 2021.”“Our broader review of the broadcast centre incident found that Channel 4’s ability to respond to the technology failure at Red Bee was not sufficiently resilient, given its back-up subtitling system failed.
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