In my life, I don't have cause to turn on closed captioning very often. Growing up, my dad would sometimes turn it on when he would get up for work, opting to keep the volume off so anyone sleeping wasn't bothered. The only other time I really see closed captioning is at the gym.* If you're on the treadmill or other cardio type machines, they often have TVs attached . Some machines let you plug your headphones right into the TV; others do not give you that option. The treadmills at my current gym are the latter type. This means subtitles.
After flipping through channels, I ended up on Comedy Central. The Colbert Show was on. While I haven't really watched it before, I've heard good things. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much of the content because I was so distracted by the subtitles. I wish I could remember the specific mess ups, but they were so bad that my brain has blocked them.
I thought maybe it was an isolated incident, but when the Daily Show started up, the terribly done subtitles continued. It got to the point that I just couldn't watch it anymore. I was spending more time trying to figure out what words they were trying to type than absorbing their content.
If you have to read closed captioning, I'm sorry, but if you try to use closed captioning when watching Comedy Central, I feel bad for you. It's just pathetic. I started wondering if it was a joke they were playing, but I really don't think it was. How unfortunate.
*I haven't been going very often, but I'm working on it.
I just watched The Daily Show from last week and the closed captioning was almost as if a cat were walking all over a keyboard. Every now and then there were words that indicated there was a slight connection. There was a lot of talk about Abe Lincoln and now and then you'd see "lincin." Is some company getting paid for this nonsense? Fortunately, I don't need the closed captioning. I just put it on by accident once and never bothered to turn it off. Now and then it's been helpful, often it's been bad, but this Daily Show was shockingly bad!
ReplyDeleteStill like that in 2020
ReplyDeleteAnd in 2021. I think who ever is doing the captioning for Trevor Noah's show is spelling everything fownetecly (phonetically)! It's horrific!!
ReplyDeleteI use cc and when The Office is on they are fine, but as soon as The Daily Show starts they do not even make sense. I've even left South Park on just to see, and that's fine too. It seems isolated to The Daily Show and that seems pretty shady honestly
ReplyDeleteAlso why has no one fixed it?! I am only slightly hearing impaired. I can hear fine, but not at low volumes. It's unacceptable that it continues on like this. Those with far more hearing impairment than I deserve better.
I can't even get subtitles at all on The Daily Show. Are they trying to find someone to do a better job or have they just given up completely?!?
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