From Victory to Failure in Four Years!

Four years ago, the new re-purposed Caption Action 2 decided to target what was then the #1 show online, Annoying Orange. Caption Action 2 thought that if it could get the #1 show to caption that it would send a message to lower-ranked shows and they would caption too. (How little we knew then!).

So we started our targeted actions. Tweets. Facebook posts. Even a facebook page just for trying to get this show captioned. Our efforts got the attention of someone. That someone was a volunteer captioner. Annoying Orange began captioning through the dedicated efforts of this volunteer. This was our first web TV captioning victory, four years ago.

These were our blog posts four years ago:

1. Help Get The Annoying Orange to Caption! - 9/30/10
2. Number One Web Series is Now Captioned!  - 11/3/10

Over the next four yeas, that volunteer became a professional with his own captioning service. Annoying Orange continued to be captioned - whether volunteer or professional, we don't know, but we think professional. Then, a few months ago, that former volunteer began working for another captioning service. Then the captioning on Annoying Orange stopped. Just like that, it stopped overnight. The last captioned episode was published May 30, 2014.  (Even before that, episodes started to be missed here and there.) No replacement captioner.

(Source: Annoying Orange videos page)

There has been no captioning since then on Annoying Orange. It is no longer as hot as it was four years ago, but still gets a healthy number of views online. Caption Action 2 tweeted and posted facebook messages, but no dice. It didn't work. Annoying Orange totally ignored our tweets and facebook messages demanding that they resume captioning.

Now what? This is a perfect example of how that gap - not requiring captions on original web TV programming - in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (21st CVAA) hurts us! Web TV producers can legally stop captioning whenever they want, and "tough luck" to us. No more captions? Oh, that's just too bad for you, you poor deaf and hard of hearing people.

Our first victory is now a FAILURE. It will remain a failure unless YOU help get it back, send a LOUD message to the producer of Annoying Orange that we will NOT tolerate the loss of captioning and it MUST resume immediately, AND they must go back and caption the uncaptioned videos!

YouTube page: .youtube.com/user/realannoyingorange
Contact: twitter.com/annoyingorange
Facebook: .facebook.com/annoyingorange
Discussion (you will need a youtube account): youtube.com/user/realannoyingorange/discussion
(Comments can also be posted on any video)

It is very important to make producers understand that captioning is not a luxury that they can drop whenever they feel like it!

Join Caption Action 2

Join Caption Action 2 on Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/groups/captionaction2!