SVG Sit-Down: VITAC's John Capobianco on How Closed Captioning Can Be a Benefit as Much as a Requirement Captioning offers a new opportunity to connect with fans and grow the audience By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, December 8, 2017 - 10:23 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Since the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) passed in 2010, requiring closed captioning for all online video, digital-sports-content producers have endeavored to find the most efficient strategy for closed captioning. However, in addition to being mandated by federal regulation, closed captioning presents a valuable new opportunity to connect with fans - whether they are inside a stadium, watching at a sports bar, or viewing a highlight on a mobile device with the sound off.
VITAC is primed to serve the growing closed-captioning needs of sports-content creators after acquiring Caption Colorado's business in January to create the largest supplier of captioning services in the U.S. SVG sat down with VITAC Chief Marketing Officer John Capobianco to discuss how the Caption Colorado merger has gone, how captioning can be an integral tool in attracting millennials to video on social media, and growth opportunities he sees in the sports market.
VITAC's John Capobianco: We do quite a few stadiums and teams. It is interesting to see that all the sports teams, as well as a lot of the event centers, are beginning to line up for captioning.
It has been almost a year since VITAC acquired Caption Colorado. How has the merger process gone, and how does the unified entity benefit customers?
The merger of the two companies has been very successful. We've had a chance to consolidate our operations, and it's allowed us to [create] a huge pool of captioners, who are the lifeblood of [our business]. I know so many people see captions show up on TV and think they're magic. As good as the automatic speech-recognition systems have become, they're not perfect, and captions have to be almost perfect to be usable at all - in excess of 98% accurate. Automatic speech-recognition systems can't do that. They can't put in the punctuation or emphasis, so captions have to be done by people to make them accurate enough to be viable. And to do that at scale, you need a huge group of quality captioners.
We have hundreds and hundreds of captioners that work as employees of VITAC. We're not crowdsourcing, so we can do quality control. And we've been able to institute that across both groups of captioners to bring them all in as one VITAC. We've been able to manage all of our customers and react to all the instant demands and the emergency broadcasts. It's been a very good, relatively seamless merger of the two companies, and we're very pleased with it.
Up to this point, captioning has primarily been seen as an obligation rather than an opportunity for sports-video producers. What new opportunities do you see?
While there are regulatory requirements to do captioning, I think [the industry] needs to broaden its view a little bit beyond that. Instead of thinking of having to do captions, [content creators] should to get into the mode of wanting to do captions.
A lot of [content creators] never think of captions because they don't realize, innocently enough, that they're missing a big part of their audience if they don't . Many people see sports where they can't necessarily hear what's going on.
Now you can for the Federal Communications Commission or the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act because it's the right thing to do, and you're legally bound to do it. But, more important, there are about 50 million Americans above the age of 12 that are deaf and hard of hearing.
That's a big market in itself. So, if you want to get your message across, which you're spending all this money to promote and you want to get out there, that's a pretty big group.
As mobile video consumption skyrockets, especially among millennials, how can captions allow content creators to better connect with consumers?
We've been doing some new research on this. There are 83 million millennials, and 80% of them interact with social media, and most social media is video. According to Facebook, 85% of videos are watched without sound. That means about 50 million or more millennials are probably watching videos without sound, many of them through their telephones and tablets. They will actually use the captions as indexing as they flick through all the different videos to see whether they're interested and they're going stop and look at that video. It's just an interesting way to think about another big group of Americans.
If you add the deaf and hard of hearing to the more than 50 million millennials who watch video without sound, even though there is some overlap, you're probably talking about one out of three Americans benefiting from the captioning - whether they're in a sports bar, whether they're in a gym, or whether they're deaf and hard of hearing.
The fact is that putting captions on your production buys you eyeballs; that's exactly what everybody wants. When you start to think about that, you start to realize there is a real market opportunity here. You have a whole new group of the millennials and the deaf and hard of hearing that you can [reach] by [captioning] everything you do. And those who don't caption are missing all of those people. It is a new phenomenon, at least for the millennials, which is exactly the audience everybody wants to get to.
By the way, captioning also makes your video addressable and findable for social media because the keywords come out in the captions. So there's lots of benefits that we're seeing, and it applies a lot to the sp
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
SVG Sit-Down: VITAC's John Capobianco on How Closed Captioning Can Be a Benefit as Much as a Requirement Captioning offers a new opportunity to connect with fans and grow the audience By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
