This article was originally published on Australian Communications and Media Authority

All commercial, national and subscription TV licensees have captioning obligations they must comply with.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has found the subscription television service FetchTV breached its licence conditions by failing to meet captioning requirements on four of its channels, CNBC Asia Pacific, BBC Living, BBC knowledge and CBeebies, in the 2018-19 financial year.

Under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992, subscription television services must comply with captioning regulations relating to various genres of channels, and provide the ACMA with an annual report detailing:

• what percent of total duration of programs transmitted was captioned for each category of service
• any exemptions or target reduction orders granted
• why they didn’t meet the target (if applicable) and what they have done to address this

The ACMA has issued Fetch TV with a Remedial Direction which notes that the service had also breached its captioning license conditions in the previous two financial years. It has directed Fetch TV provide the ACMA with annual reports detailing “the administrative processes and practices it has in place to monitor and enable compliance with its annual captioning targets”.