Flo TV Can't Commit to Captioning!

Today Caption Action 2 spoke with Matthew Hutchison, the Senior Director of Public Relations for Flo TV. It was a discouraging conversation, as shown below:

(Flo TV is a mobile digital TV broadcaster, as explained in the previous Caption Action 2 blog post)

Matthew: hi this (confirming spelling) matthew GA
Caption Action 2 : hello this is jamie berke calling back at 9 pm eastern time as agreed ga
Matthew : hello jamie GA
Caption Action 2 : i sent you an email with the questions. you know what my questions are..do you have any answers for me qga
Matthew : at this point in time flo tv (confirming spelling) does not support close captioning but it is something we are considering in the future GA
Caption Action 2 : how far into the future? do you have any rough idea of when closed captioning would be available qga
Matthew : i do not but i will keep you posted GA
Caption Action 2 : what about the Flo TV chip? could you re-engineer that to add closed captioning circuitry? then a cell phone that has Flo TV such as the iPhone, could show captions on Flo TV programming. ga
Matthew : it is not a question of the chip GA
Caption Action 2 : it is not? what is it then qga
Matthew : will you honor off the record comments qq GA
Caption Action 2 : why does it have to be off the record qga
Matthew : i m willing to address questions if in many cases the bloggers will allow us to speak on background and off the record if that s not the case i can t answer questions GA
Caption Action 2 : everything you say has to be on the record so to speak. my next question - I know that Flo TV has its own mobile TV standard. there is another standard that was just approved called the Open Mobile Digital TV standard [actually it is Open Mobile Video Coalition]. I think that's the name, from memory., that standard already supports closed captioning. Is there any way Flo TV could borrow from that standard to add closed captioning capability qga
Matthew : as stated we are looking into this when we have developments i will let you know GA
Caption Action 2 : alright. are you able to give me any idea, even a very rough one, of when you might be able to support closed captioning? a year from now? five years from now qga
Matthew : uhh i uhh i cannot commit to a time frame at this time GA
Caption Action 2 : i see that we can't discuss captioning any further. before i go..do you know about a new bill in congress, HR 3101, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009? qga

[Was on hold awhile and when he came back Caption Action 2 repeated the question]

Matthew : i personally do not GA
Caption Action 2 : well that bill has a provision that will affect Flo TV, so I suggest you make closed captioning a higher priority than it is now. ga
Matthew: thank you will look into it GA

Caption Action 2 offered to tell him what that provision(s) was, but he had to run because of a family emergency. So that was the end of that conversation.

Bottom line: It looks like we deaf and hard of hearing people CAN NOT expect closed captioning support or closed captioned programming from Flo TV anytime soon.

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