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In
response to Oregon Public Broadcasting dropping the Golden
Hours radio reading service, the International Association
of Audio Information Services (IAAIS) sent the following letter
to Oregon Public Broadcasting:
April
10th, 2008
Tara
Taylor
VP Marketing & Planning
Oregon Public Broadcasting
7140 SW Macadam Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97219-3099 via email: ttaylor@opb.org
Re: Imminent Demise of SAP-delivered
Accessible Information Network (formerly Golden Hours Radio)
The
International Association of Audio Information Services (IAAIS)
is a member-based organization of audio information services
that serve the news and information needs of more than a million
blind, low-vision and other vision-restricted American consumers,
including seniors, by broadcasting print media in audio format
via SCA subcarrier, SAP broadcast, telephone dial-up services
and other venues. IAAIS provides mentoring to reading services
in the areas of administration, fund development, volunteer
management, program production and technology.
Lighthouse
International (www.lighthouse.org) estimates that 15% of Americans
age 45 to 64 years report some form of vision impairment ranging
from the inability to read regular newspaper print even when
wearing glasses, to blindness in one or both eyes; and, among
persons age 65 and older, an estimated 21% report vision impairment.
Based upon the 2006 American Community Survey of population
demographics for Oregon there were approximately 250,000 Oregonians
age 45+ with vision impairment and this does not include younger
people who also could benefit from access to a reading service.
It
has come to our attention that Oregon Public Broadcasting
(OPB) plans to discontinue broadcast of the Accessible Information
Network (AIN), formerly Golden Hours Radio, the only reading
service in Oregon, as of April 21st, 2008. Therefore we are
questioning the rationale OPB cites in its March 13th, 2008
News Release as to why the challenges of maintaining the service
are too great for OPB:
Demise
of the Secondary Audio Program (SAP) and the lack of any feasible
and effective methods of delivering the service following
the end of analog television broadcasting next year:
The conversion to digital does not take place until February
17th, 2009. Why is OPB discontinuing the SAP-delivered
reading service 9 months before the Congress-legislated
DTV conversion?
- The
ATSC DTV standard provides two very high quality audio channels
on each of the several digital television stations each
DTV channel allows, supports conditional programming and
offers specific substreams within the audio encoded stream
for vision- and hearing-impaired viewers. OPB will be expanding
its number of television stations to four in digital format
which should mean multiple audio carriers as well. What
other delivery options has OPB explored to ensure the future
of AIN/Golden Hours, the reading service for blind, vision-impaired
and/or senior Oregonians that OPB has supported for 33 years?
-
OPB was one of the first US broadcasters to launch its reading
service on HD Radio. Accessible receivers are in the works.
Is OPB also discontinuing this mode of delivery?
The
difficulty in identifying any significant user base of AIN/Golden
Hours:
-
Unlike SCA-delivery, it is not easy to track SAP usage since
media research companies can only track audience numbers
of the main TV channel. Generally reading service listeners
tend to be older vision-impaired and/or senior citizens
and not particularly prone to calling radio and/or SAP-based
services. But reading service listeners do not live in isolation;
they have family and friends and also are television viewers
and therefore could have been reached via promotion of AIN/Golden
Hours on OPB's radio stations and television channels. How
has OPB promoted its support of AIN/Golden Hours to its
TV viewers and mainstream radio listeners during the last
33 years? What surveys has OPB undertaken/sponsored to identify
potential and existing AIN/Golden Hours users?
-
AIN/Golden Hours was launched in 1975 on the SCA and is
a more viable way to track listeners because of the need
for SCA receivers. Why did OPB decide to move AIN/Golden
Hours from its original broadcast mode a number of years
ago?
The
cost of producing content and the lack of any viable revenue
sources to support AIN as one of the major challenges:
-
In every major market in the US and in many cities around
the globe we have seen a wide variety of viable revenue
sources that support reading services. Therefore this OPB
rationale prompts a number of questions; Is the reading
service allowed to fund raise? If, yes, does the reading
service have staff allocated to do this? If no, what efforts
have been made by OPB to solicit funding to subsidize the
operating costs of the reading service?
-
OPB's Form 990 for the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2007
reports Total Revenue of $30,140,276 and Total Expenses
of $28,451,541. Surely the cost of operating AIN/Golden
Hours can't be more than 1.0% of the expenses?
Skyrocketing
number and variety of news media sources so more choice for
blind/vision-impaired and/or senior consumers in Oregon and
less need for AIN/Golden Hours:
- This
reason implies redundancy, but in fact reading services
fulfill a need unmet by any other form of media; verbatim,
full-text readings of newspaper/magazine articles/columns/feature
stories plus newspaper flyers, birth & death notices,
community event listings and specialized programming of
interest to vision-impaired listeners. As mentioned earlier,
the makeup of the reading service listener base is predominantly
consumers in the older age group who do not necessarily
relate to 'modern' technological devices such as iPods,
synthetic speech, or the internet. This demographic grew
up reading their daily paper, a variety of magazines and
best seller books. And this demographic often does not perceive
themselves as disabled, but just getting older.
-
NLS provides a selection of magazines and many books that
need to be ordered/delivered or require a visit to the library.
NFB-Newsline uses digitized speech and is accessed by telephone.
AMD Alliance International's White Paper "Quality of
Life in Age-related Macular Degeneration, September 2006"
reports that patients with MD, the leading cause of blindness
in older people, are 12 times more likely to have problems
using a telephone compared to visually unimpaired elderly
people.
-
With so many other broadcast outlets in the market, the
redundancy rationale can equally apply to OPB's existence.
But OPB's target demographic is obviously the sighted population
of Oregon. Otherwise OPB would realize that the target audience
for reading services have limited access to visual media
and do not get the 'full story' or range of content from
television or mainstream radio.
Sighted
Oregonians still will have the choice/opportunity to read
their newspapers and magazines after April 21st. It is unconscionable
that blind, vision-impaired, senior and other vision-restricted
Oregonians will no longer have the choice/opportunity to read
their newspapers and magazines in audio format because the
Board of Oregon Public Broadcasting has decided to shut down
its 33-year old state-wide reading service.
We
offer our services to help resolve this situation since, at
the moment, the OPB mission; giving voice to the community,
connecting Oregon and its neighbors, illuminating a wider
world will have no relevance for a few hundred thousand
Oregonians after April 21st.
International
Association of Audio Information Services
Per:
Heather Lusignan
President
416-422-4222, ext 224
hlusignan@nbrscanada.com
Kim
Walsh
First Vice President
313-577-7684
kwalsh@wdetfm.org
Copy:
Steven M. Bass, President & CEO, OPB - ceo@opb.org
Laura Oppenheimer, The Oregonian - loppenheimer@news.oregonian.com
Jerry Delaunay, Program Director, Accessible Information Network
- jdelaunay@opb.org
James Edwards, President, Oregon ACB - jamese111@verizon.net
John D. Dingell, Chairman, House Committee on Energy &
Commerce - fax
Edward J. Markey, Chairman, Subcommittee on Telecommunications
& the Internet - fax
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