By Peter Berton
GATINEAU, Canada – Why must porn on Canadian pay-TV be closed-captioned? While other news outlets were asking this question rhetorically and then chortling at their own witty answers, the Canadian Bureau of YNOT.com went right to the source to find out.
The answer, according to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission: Rules are rules, even when they don’t make sense.
Even CRTC representatives admit providing hearing-impaired viewers of adult content with onscreen text to describe the scintillating dialogue, squishy sound effects and “boom-chica-wow-wow” guitar riffs featured in porn is … well, strange.
“I sort of had the same question” about why porn must be closed-captioned in Canada, official CRTC spokeswoman Patricia Valladao told YNOT.
Still, the added, when a rule states all licensed channels must provide closed-captioning, the CRTC has no authority to provide a waiver.
“There’s no exemption,” Valladao explained. “I’ve asked the [CRTC’s] experts ‘Why do we have closed-captioning [required for a porn service]?’ They said, ‘because we could not make an exception.’”
The explanation has done little to defray the guffawing at the CRTC’s expense following the agency’s decision not to renew licenses for three adult channels unless the channels add more Canadian-made content and closed-caption 90-percent of their broadcasts.
Valladao said the CRTC’s requirement that 35 percent of all material broadcast in Canada be home-grown is another all-inclusive rule.
“It’s a general requirement,” she told YNOT. “That goes for all licensees.”
She did concede the requirement seems absurd.
