O.T. - Closed Captioning on TV

Every morning when I turn on my TV, I have to turn off the closed captioning.  I am amazed at the misspelling of the words.  If I wasn't able to hear what the person speaking was saying, I would never know what they were talking about trying to read what was on the screen.

 Does all this misspelling bother anyone else? 

I have noticed that, too.  For taped and filmed stuff I think it is done while it is being recorded.  TV stations are required by the FCC to provide closed captioning even for live stuff - which is really difficult.  I asked him how it is done and this was his reply:

"We type the stuff for the news (it’s actually the feed from the teleprompter being sent to the closed captioning system)..

I think for network shows they have someone who transcribes them while they’re being taped.

For live shows, they have someone who can type really fast doing it live.  There’s a lady in Austin, TX who does that for a living…she just listens to the show over a phone line and types into some internet connection that’s piped back to the network in NY."

So I guess that would explain spelling errors.

Count me as someone who has noticed that too. I wondered if maybe it was because they use a computer program that translates voice to written word. Very interesting that it's a real person. The ones doing it around here need to work on their accuracy..but to be fair it must be very difficult to do live.

A couple of years ago the FCC mandated that even the chit-chat between the anchors had to be closed-captioned.  Well - the local stations can't type that in live as it happens and chit-chat can't be scripted so that is why what shows up on the closed captioned during the chit-chat might not be accurate.

Ooops - was a little hasty hitting the "post"!  LOL!  Are you seeing the mistakes on local shows, live shows or the pre-recorded kind - like movies, sit-coms, etc.?  Other than local and network news cand cable-news stations - there aren't a whole lot of "live" programs on anymore.  Even the late night talk shows are pre-recorded.

sometimes. about the only time I use mine is if i'm watching a movie because if you keep it low enough so the louder stuff doesn't bother others, you can't hear when people are speaking softly to each other.