CC Girl's Blog by Impact Media

A Timeline of Closed Captioning in The United States

March 16, 1980: The first closed captioned television series were broadcast for those who had bought caption decoders were The ABC Sunday Night Movie, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Masterpiece Theater.

1982: Real-time captioning debuted.

1990: Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 was passed, requiring all television receivers with screens of 13" or larger be able to receive and display captions by 1993. Also the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 enacted, requiring all federally funded public service announcements to be closed captioned.

1992: FCC adopted technical standards for closed captioning on cable systems.

1993: Requirements from Television Decoder Circuitry Act of 1990 took effect.

1996: Telecommunications Act of 1996 adds Section 713 to the Communications Act, requiring the FCC to prescribe rules, and implementation schedules for closed captioning of television video programs.

1997: The FCC adopted rules that gradually increase the amount of programming requiring closed captioning.

1998: FCC's closed captioning rules went into effect.

2000: The FCC adopts an order, requiring an increasing amount of digital television programming to be captioned, and establishes a phase-in schedule for closed captioning of digital programming.

2006: 100% of all new video programming, with exceptions, had be closed captioned on both digital and analog televisions (new analog programming is programming first aired on/after January 1, 1998; new digital programming is programming first aired on/after July 1, 2002)

2008: 75% of all pre-rule video programming (pre-rule analog programming is programming first aired before January 1, 1998; pre-rule digital programming is programming first aired before July 1, 2002) had to be captioned.

2010: 100% of all new analog and digital Spanish language programs, with exceptions, had to be closed captioned.

2012: 75% of all pre-rule Spanish-language video programming had to be captioned.

2015: Best Practices of Closed Captioning went into effect in March, which included rules for accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and placement of captions.

2016: Video clips were required to be closed captioned if any portion of the clip appeared on television, or via IP closed captioned at any time.

January 1, 2017: all montage clips must be closed captioned from any prerecorded programming captioned on television or via IP. This applies to any portion of television programs, such as best of or highlights could be considered a montage.

July 1, 2017: "near-live" programming (less than 24 hours after recording must be closed captioned within 8 hours of initial airing. In addition any live programing closed captioned for television must be closed captioned within 12 hours of the broadcast if delivered via IP.

Please note that these new captioning rules require that they meet the new best practices of closed captioning guidelines, and must adhere to accuracy, synchronicity, completeness, and caption placement rules put into place by the FCC in March of 2015.