NEWSrelease

News from the National Captioning Institute, Inc.

Date: October 17, 2002

Contact: Jay Feinberg

703-917-7600 (V/TTY)

703-917-9853 (FAX)

jfeinberg@ncicap.org

NCI Receives Six Grants to Caption News and
Public Information Programming

Department of Education Funding Provides Three-Year Commitments For National News, Local News and Spanish Language Programming

Washington, D.C. – The National Captioning Institute (NCI) has been awarded six grants from the U.S. Department of Education to caption over 46,000 hours of news and public information programming over a three-year period from October 1, 2002 to September 30, 2005.

“Captioning of news programming has always been the top priority according to surveys of captioned television viewers,” stated NCI President and COO Jack Gates. “NCI is pleased to continue working with the U.S. Department of Education and the participating television networks to make such a wide range of news and informational programming accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as to many others who benefit from captioning.”

Two of the grants are for national news and public information programming and represent a total of ten major broadcast and cable networks. NCI is continuing to work with The Weather Channel, Fox News Channel and Bloomberg Television. NCI is also working with King World to caption Inside Edition and Inside Edition Weekend; Fox Broadcasting to caption Fox News Sunday; BET to caption BET Tonight and Lead Story; and MSNBC to caption its primetime lineup including Donahue, Hardball with Chris Matthews and MSNBC Reports.

Other programs covered by partial news grant funding include the dominant network evening newscast NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Saturday Today, Sunday Today, and the most watched Sunday morning interview program Meet the Press. A sports news show on TNT, Listen Up! Charles Barkley with Ernie Johnson, is being captioned through partial grant funding.

The two national news grants will provide approximately $1.4 million over three years (29% of total funding), while the private sector will provide approximately $3.5 million (71% of project costs).

A grant awarded to NCI for captioning Spanish language news and informational programming is helping to provide access to television programs for deaf and hard of hearing members of the Hispanic population. CNN en Español is providing several Spanish language programs for captioning including El Mundo Informa featuring both news and lifestyle reporting, Adelantos reporting on science and technology, and Destinos spotlighting global travel information. Grant funding will provide almost $345,000 over three years (84% of project costs), while private funding will be over $67,000 (16% of costs).

Other grants will continue and expand the real-time captioning of local news on three Rochester, New York television stations including WHEC, WOKR and WROC. The U.S. Department of Education will provide almost $1.2 million during the three years of the grant (92% of funding), while private funding will provide about $107,000 (8% of funding).

With offices in the Washington, DC metropolitan area; Burbank, CA; New York, NY; Dallas, TX; and London, England, the nonprofit National Captioning Institute is the global captioning leader, supplying the highest-quality closed captioning and related services for broadcast and cable television, home video and DVD, and government and corporate video programming.

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