Pittsfield Community Television is committed to providing accessibility to our content for the entirety of the people of Pittsfield and beyond, whatever the range of their abilities. This page is devoted to providing you with news and information about our continued efforts on that front.
Closed Captioning
Closed Captioning provides the ability for hearing-impaired viewers to engage with television content by displaying text on the screen and is unique because it can be turned on and off by viewers based on need. Captions can currently be viewed on certain programs on the PCTV website, www.pittsfieldtv.org, and the PCTV Select smart device app. Many more programs will be captioned in the coming weeks and months, and PCTV is hopeful that the captioning can extend to the public, education, and government channels on Spectrum in Pittsfield. Viewers would normally be able to view the captions on the Citylink channel, 1303, simply by switching on the closed captions using their remote control – unfortunately, Spectrum is not currently allowing captions to appear on its channels 1301, 1302, and 1303.
“This is a critical accessibility issue for viewers and community members,” said PCTV Executive Director Shawn Serre. “We want people of all abilities to benefit from the important local programming provided by PCTV. I thank the Commission for their initial investment in this service and implore Charter Spectrum to step up and do the right thing: make the changes at your end to pass these closed captions along to your cable TV viewers,” he said. Congress requires video programming distributors (VPDs) – cable operators, satellite distributors, and other multi-channel video programming distributors – to include closed captions provided from any of their source channels. While the cost of adding captions to video programming has been reduced in recent years, it remains a significant expense for local television organizations which choose to provide the service.
We would like to thank the following organizations, who have generously provided grants to fund the operation of our closed captioning software: