USA-L News, 12/23/99 No. 1

[Philip N. Moos]

 From the newsroom of the PRNewswire, Wednesday, December 22, 1999 .....


The Weather Channel to Offer Closed Captioning as Additional Service for
the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing

ATLANTA, Dec. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The Weather Channel will begin closed
captioning in a test mode on Monday, December 27th, as the first step in a
year-long progression that will eventually result in 20 hours of closed
captioning daily on the all-weather network. The National Captioning
Institute (NCI) has been working with TWC to establish a system for
providing the service; a test of the system was successfully completed on
December 16th.

The procedure to create closed captioning for programming on The Weather
Channel requires particular attention. The forecasters, called on-camera
meteorologists at The Weather Channel, are so well versed and knowledgeable
about weather that they ad-lib most of their presentation, rather than
reading from a script. So the closed captioning must be done "live" by
operators at NCI tuned in to The Weather Channel and simultaneously
keyboarding the words as they are being spoken. These are then
instantaneously transmitted with TWC's satellite feed and decoded by TV
sets equipped for closed captioning. The words appear on the viewers'
screens as two lines of text just above updates from local weather sensors
available to all viewers through special technology exclusive to TWC. The
closed captioning format was carefully planned to minimize infringement on
the weather maps and graphics that are essential to TWC's overall
programming picture. "Although The Weather Channel, with its emphasis on
pictorial explanation, is already frequently useful for the deaf and
hard-of-hearing, we are pleased to be able to enhance our service for the
millions of Americans who will find captioning an additional benefit to
help them be prepared for and understand the weather," said Patrick Scott,
executive vice president and general manager of the network.

Betty Hallman, NCI's vice president of sales and marketing, noted that,
"The Weather Channel is known for its exceptional reporting of the weather
and its vital storm coverage. It is an honor to be working with them to
provide this tremendous service to the closed caption viewers. This type of
access is essential."

Starting January 1, The Weather Channel will caption five hours of
programming: the 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. time period and the 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
prime viewing time. In June, the amount of closed captioning on TWC will
double with expanded hours of captioning from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.
to 11 p.m. Next January, The Weather Channel will establish a regular
schedule of closed captioning for 20 hours of its programming day.

BACKGROUND:

The Weather Channel, based in Atlanta, is the nation's preeminent source of
weather information. The only national 24-hour weather network, The Weather
Channel is seen in more than 74 million U.S. homes with another 4.5 million
households subscribed in Latin America. The Weather Channel Web site,
weather.com, is the leading online weather provider, averaging over 130
million page views per month.

With offices in Washington; Burbank, CA; New York, NY; and London, England,
the non-profit National Captioning Institute is the global captioning
leader, supplying the highest quality closed-captioning services to the
television, cable and home video industries.

The funding for closed captioning is made possible in part by a grant from
the U.S. Department of Education.

Contact: K. Lane of The Weather Channel, 770-226-2102 or Jay Feinberg of
National Captioning Institute, 703-917-7603

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|  Philip N. Moos              pmoos at pluto.njcc.com     |
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