Monday 1st August, 2011

TV ONE’s iconic Te Reo news programme, Te Karere will carry English subtitles on its live 4pm bulletin from today.

The decision to put closed captions on the 4pm programme is in response to the growing demand from non Maori speaking viewers to be able to appreciate and understand the programme thus making it accessible to a much larger audience of both Maori and non-Maori alike.

“We receive emails and letters every day from viewers wanting to be able to understand Te Karere so we hope the move will extend our reach to a non Maori speaking audience and therefore expect it to have a positive effect on ratings. We're not sure of how many new viewers this may bring at this stage,” says Te Karere’s Executive Producer, Shane Taurima.

Te Karere is presented by Scotty Morrison (professor of Te Reo at UNITEC) and averages around 60,000 viewers daily at 4pm. When it replays later on TV ONE and TVNZ 7 it carries English subtitles.

“This initiative has taken three years to come to fruition because of financial and technology issues and we’d like to thank NZ On-Air for funding this to make it possible now.

“The captioning will also mean deaf and hearing-impaired caption users will also be able to understand Te Karere.

The subtitles are closed – they will not appear on screen unless the viewer selects captions to be on in caption menu. Instructions about how to do this are on Te Karere’s webpage.

http://tvnz.co.nz/te-karere/access-live-subtitles-4301722

“The addition of closed captions is giving our viewers a choice. It's most definitely a step forward for Maori language and broadcasting.

“The live interviews won't be captioned at this stage, because of the live nature of the programme, but we do hope to be able to do this in the near future.

ENDS

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