Channel 4 subtitles not likely to return until mid November

Services on Channel 4, including subtitles, signing and audio description will probably not return on TV until mid-November. This is nearly two months after the catastrophic fault causing their absence.

The outage has already lasted for over three weeks. This has angered many viewers who are deaf, hard of hearing or visually impaired. Broadcasting regulator Ofcom has received over 500 complaints so far.

On 25 September, a fire suppressant system destroyed hard discs at a broadcast centre, causing the fault to happen. The incident also affected other broadcasters, such as Channel 5 and BBC, but they have now restored all their services.

However, Channel 4 is now having to build a new system from scratch after the failure of an emergency back-up subtitles system. They currently predict the problem will be fixed by mid-November, but are working to do it sooner if they can.

A slow process

Channel 4 issued a statement apologising to viewers for not currently providing access to services. They say they “realise how frustrating this is”.

From this week, the broadcaster will start offering subtitles on online catch-up service All4 for some of its biggest shows, like Gogglebox and The Great British Bake Off.

However, it can still not provide any audio description or sign language services at all. An update published on Tuesday states that “these services were irretrievably lost during the incident”. The channel is not able to restore them until it moves to the new system that is currently being built.

The broadcaster does not want to “rush this and run the risk of something going wrong”. It believes that something like this requires a slow installation. This will ensure its channels do not come off air again and they can prevent something like this from happening in the future. However, it does mean people may not have full access to services until the middle of November. But “if we can do anything to speed up this process, we will,” they add.

‘Unacceptable’

The chief executive at hearing loss charity RNID, Mark Atkinson, says: “It’s impossible to imagine a failure that affected the hearing community being allowed to go on for so long”. The 12 million odd people in the UK who have impaired hearing have felt excluded for over three weeks now. It is no wonder they are getting increasingly angry, as the system providing subtitles and signed content is broken.

Mr Atkinson thinks it is “unacceptable that the system could have failed so spectacularly, and that Channel 4 have still not fixed the problem”. Although the BBC and Channel 5 are now offering a near to normal service. The fact is, there “was a failure across the board to communicate to deaf people regularly and – most importantly – accessibly”.

Channel 4 have started to provide updates to the deaf community in British Sign Language. They need to keep people with hearing loss informed about what they are doing until the problem is fixed.

A spokesperson from Ofcom says: “We remain extremely concerned by the impact on people who rely on these services”. Channel 4 did not have good enough backup measures in place. They also failed to provide the public with a clear plan and timeline for fixing the issues. It should not have taken them several weeks to announce the action they are taking. Ofcom now expect Channel 4 to meet the deadlines set for restoring the vital services.

“Sort it out”

A spokesman for Red Bee Media, who own the broadcast centre where the incident occurred, says “things are improving every day”. They can deliver more accessible programmes, but are still experiencing issues receiving media. This is needed by the access teams for them to create pre-recorded subtitles, audio descriptions and signing. The firm will share further updates as soon as more information is available.

The original fault took Channel 4, Channel 5 and S4C temporarily off air. It subsequently led to transmission problems on the days that followed. For example, E4 had to delay broadcasting of the final episode of the latest series of Married At First Sight.

Presenter Adam Hills addressed the problems on an episode of The Last Leg which aired on Channel 4 on 8 October. He held up a hand-written sign saying “Sorry there’s still no subtitles”, followed by one with the words “Sort it out”.

Newspaper reports suggest that the fire suppression system at the broadcast centre sucked all the oxygen out of the room. This then caused a “sonic wave” which shut the transmission servers down.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the London Fire Brigade says: “Firefighters were called to reports a gas suppression system had activated at a building on Wood Lane in White City on Saturday 25th September”. On site engineers worked to ventilate the server room where the suppression system had activated. Firefighters searched the building and the room in question, but did not find any apparent signs of a fire.

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