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Discovering Closed-Captioning

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2001 at 6:04 PM Category: Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech No comments

Not trying to be a namedropper here, but Zeldman pointed out a must-read article: The King of Closed Captions. I’ve been familiar with Joe Clark for a long time because I am an avid supporter of CC especially with my profound hearing loss. In 1983 or so, I got my first CC decoder – a butt-ugly clunky brown box with old-fashioned TV handles for changing selections. The first CC thing I saw was a Bond, James Bond movie. Which one? I don’t recall. I DO remember being in awe because for once in my life I didn’t have to ask, “What did she say?” “What happened?” “What’s so funny?”

Most of the answers were, “Nothing.” “Just that blah blah. OK? Shhhh!”

Then I discovered a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html%3FASIN=B0007IO6V4%26tag=manalangcom-20%26lcode=xm2%26cID=2025%26ccmID=165953%26location=/o/ASIN/B0007IO6V4%253FSubscriptionId=0EMV44A9A5YT1RVDGZ82″ title=”View product details at Amazon”>Dynasty and Alexis vs. Krystle cat fights. I hated waiting a whole week to see the next episode. The next day, I would talk about the show with my best buddy. It was amazing to be able to talk to a friend about a TV show and what happened.

I watched EVERY show that was CC in the early to mid-’80s. By the late ’80s, there was enough CC TV programs for me to make choices.

CC expanded to cable and I finally got the opportunity to watch old movies like “Double Indemnity” and most Hitchcock films thanks to Turner Classic Movies. TCM captioned many of its classics. I still have not seen original “The Odd Couple” movie in CC because no one has provided CC! Plus, the arrival of DVD provided more opportunities to view older movies.

Then in the late-’90s (or so), MTV and VH-1 captioned its music videos. By then, I was over rock ‘n roll TV. Nonetheless, it was an exciting moment to see the words of a song instead of just listen to music and watch da moves.

Now, if online videos would get captioned, I’d be a happy camper.