Dear Turner Classic Movies (TCM):
I fell in love with you years ago. Who wouldn’t love a cable channel that broadcasts (and re-broadcasts (and, all right, re-re-broadcasts)) timeless movies, often in black-and-white, that otherwise would have faded into obscurity years ago?
True, I had moments of doubt (they happen in the best of relationships).
Mostly, you didn’t seem to care that I had to change the channel. Not because I didn’t want to see the feature (I did! I did!), no. Rather, I had to change the channel because I couldn’t hear what anyone was saying, or could hear only sporadically. I could often read lips in the closeups but eventually I’d tire. I’m no spring chicken anymore, you know. So I’d sigh melodramatically — you never noticed, did you? — and switch over to something ghastly like SPIKE or SciFi or even the Hallmark Channel… at least until they, too, turned a cold shoulder to me.
But you kept winning me back. More and more films would be close-captioned — even the oldest ones from early in the sound era. And I know, I know — the studios and distributors probably paid for the captioning. So maybe it was out of your hands, not your decision anyway.
Still, I think maybe you were just toying with my affections.
Why?
Because, damn it, you still do not provide captions for the introductions and wrap-up commentary by Robert Osborne, RoseMcGowan, and others.
In your frequently asked questions, I did find a relevant one with your (not entirely satisfying) answer:
When will Robert Osbourne’s [sic] segments be available with Close Captions?
Though we are not able to offer a definite timeline, we hope to caption Robert’s intro & outros sometime in the future. Our challenge is overcoming the number of segments and small turn-around time before they air.
Thank you for your patience.
And at a forum on your Web site, I found a recent thread on this topic. So I know I’m not alone in wondering about this, and not crazy. And I know it’s expensive, and I know — and I appreciate, O my love, I truly do — that you are, after all, providing your services free of cost to me. (Well, except however my cable charges get dribbled out to you.)
Maybe you and I will have to part ways about this eventually. I hope not. But in any case, surely Mr. Osborne, Ms. McGowan, and the rest deserve better treatment from you.
Yours,
JES
It took having a friend work with the physically disabled to appreciate how poorly designed most handicapped bathrooms and parking spaces really are, and it took being an ESL teacher to appreciate the weirdness or problems of the English language. So, it takes a post like this to appreciate yet another thing some of us take for granted.
Seems like TCM is taking a few folks for granted too. (Oh, I do love those old movies!)
You know who else does this? That other movie channel…um, AMC–American Movie Classics! We get that too and it shows some really great old and not so old movies and I get so frustrated that I can’t use closed captioning with them. I guess it goes along with the…well, you don’t get any money from the insurance company if you need hearing aids, ’cause we really can’t qualify your deafness! Thanks she says as the truck she can’t hear barrels down the road in her direction! Sorry, I rant…
marta: It helps to remember how far we’ve come. I mean, I’d have killed even to have a closed-captioning option, anywhere, anytime while growing up. And it’s also true that doing without probably strengthened me — helped me find my way to resources within (like the limited lip-reading I can do) that I wouldn’t have, otherwise. But after you’ve had the luxury of (effectively) having a sense restored to you in most circumstances, it’s also difficult not to see (and be frustrated by) the gaps remaining.
cynth: We only watch movies on AMC every now and then — mostly, the commercials drive us up a wall. (AMC used to be commercial-free but the temptation obviously was too great.) Not really in their defense, but one thing that makes it easier for Turner to caption their films is that many of those old films are (or once were) in Ted T’s own vault, and later in his company’s. All the MGMs, especially.
Medical coverage, or lack of same, is an even bigger hot-button issue for me, too. But I’ve been living with that reality for so long that all I can muster the strength for is rolling my eyes and pouting. :)