Carriage in hand, The Accessible Channel gears up for launch

While many are disappointed with the decisions rendered during last month's CRTC process to determine who will get mandatory carriage on all-digital distribution systems, the staff at Toronto-based National Broadcast Reading Service (NBRS) are happily hard at work readying for the debut of their first specialty programming service.NBRS' application to launch a new service called The Accessible Channel, which will broadcast 100% of its programming in open described video, was approved by the commission with relatively few alterations to the business plan. For instance, the regulator ruled that the channel could keep its proposed 20 cents per subscriber wholesale rate, even after NBRS offered to reduce it to 18 cents.Although he admits there's still lots to do - including hiring enough staff to run the operation - NBRS president Bob Trimbee says he's optimistic the new offering will be up and running by year's end."I'm hoping by the time we celebrate our 18th anniversary on December 1, we can make a hard launch of our digital service," he says, adding that NBRS' board was scheduled to meet met last week to begin the process of hammering out all the intricacies of adding another specialty channel to the broadcasting system.The open described video feature stands in contrast to NBRS' other licensed offering, Voiceprint, which caters to the visually impaired and is distributed through a long-standing partnership with CBC Newsworld. That service, which employs news readers in seven locations across Canada, is accessible through Newsworld's secondary audio programming (SAP).However, for those with restricted sight, navigating the series of button presses and menu commands required to turn on the SAP can be difficult, Trimbee says. With open described video, the audio description is permanently in place: "You just get the digital service and there it is."What's more, although the conditions of Voiceprint's current licence allow for the service's carriage on digital Class 1 and 2 systems, Trimbee says NBRS hadn't anticipated the full scale of the impending digital migration in 2004, when the licence was issued. Now, he says, the promise of all-digital distribution networks makes the Voiceprint service essentially obsolete."Once the commission came out with its comments about digital migration, we said well, it's coming sooner rather than later, and we'd better get there," Trimbee says, explaining the impetus for the new service.But The Accessible Channel's application was not without its detractors, not the least of whom is Toronto accessibility consultant and author Joe Clark. He says NBRS' admission that Voiceprint is cumbersome to use for its visually impaired constituency means the service isn't meeting its stated goals, and should be pulled."Doesn't that mean that Voiceprint's mandatory carriage on the SAP of Newsworld should be cancelled immediately?" he asks.Clark also notes that many in the blind and visually impaired community, including the Kelowna BC-based Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, also voiced fears that approving the application might signal to BDUs and conventional broadcasters that they're absolved of their condition-of-licence requirements to provide accessible programming."While the CRTC claims that this is not an escape hatch for broadcasters to produce their audio description requirements, nor is it a so-called amnesty, to use their word, for a distributor to pass through SAP, in reality that is exactly what it is," Clark says.Additional concerns over The Accessible Channel's seemingly close ties with CTV Inc. - indeed, CTV president Rick Brace appeared as part of NBRS' panel during the CRTC hearings - were mitigated by a provision in the new channel's condition of licence that prevents it from sourcing more than 33% of its programming from one supplier.That restriction, coupled with another prohibiting The Accessible Channel from using another NBRS entity, AudioVision Canada, to describe more than 50% of the programming it acquires, appear to be aimed at satisfying both commissioners' concerns and objections from intervenors.

Carriage in hand, The Accessible Channel gears up for launch

Broadcast | August 13, 2007

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