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Saturday, March 27, 2004

Today's Flog Gentry 

It's great to have a job where there are four TV's on while you work. In the studio, though, I often have to keep the volume down and rely on the Closed Captioning. The technology works reasonably well, all things considered, and the captioning of course provides a great service to the deaf.

For the rest of us, however, it's just weird. During taped shows and commercials it's always accurate -- they just put a pre-prepared script into the system. Though it does make you realize how much of what we laugh at isn't funny if you can't hear. AFLAC commercials just aren't the same when you have to read "Duck says AFLAC" and "Duck grunts."

But it's sporting events, newscasts, and other live shows that provide humor everyone can enjoy. For live broadcasts a stenographer does that steno thang -- like a court reporter. The steno machine is then hooked up to a computer which translates the shorthand into English. This often produces results that amuse me during my own newscasts. Here are just a few that I can remember:

* During a local sports feature on the NCAA tournament: "A very big win for this Pitt babble team."

* Notre Dame football game: "Last year these two teams went toad to toad, down to the wire."

And my personal favorite....

* During a Pirates' telecast: "That brings up the cleanup hitter, Miss Ramadan." (Aramis Ramirez)

Even turning it on for a short while will usually yield a couple mistakes, even if they're not side-splitting. In the past half hour on CBS, deaf viewers would think Greg Gumbel turned into President Bush ("The past few games they haven't been in a close contestment.") And Clark Kellogg added that "Alabama is a young team that's been able to overheave."

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