Adding the captions, which are visible only when activated by TV controls,is a simple process and doesn't cost much. Yet during the most recent SuperBowl, just 17 out of 69 commercials offered closed captioning, according toCaptions.com, an Internet watchdog site for the deaf and hearing impaired.That means, for viewers who, for whatever reason, were reading the SuperBowl commentary rather than listening to it, the commercials were allvisuals and no language. Among the companies that didn't provide closedcaptions were Ford Motor, PepsiCo, Charles Schwab and FedEx. Microsoft,Philip Morris and AnheuserBusch's Budweiser topped the list of companiesthat did caption their ads.

A spokesman for Omnicom Group's BBDO Worldwide, which represents seven ofthe companies that had non-captioned commercials directly preceding orduring the big game, said production time is often to blame when ads aren'tcaptioned. "In general, the agency captions for all its clients," thespokesman said. "Exceptions may occur with examples of short timing. Ifwe're editing a Super Bowl spot up to the last minute, timing may not allowfor immediate captioning, but the spot will be captioned afterwards."

But Betty Hallman, vice-president of sales and marketing at the NationalCaptioning Institute, a non-profit corporation based in Vienna, Va., said,"Turnaround for big events can be tight, but we do commercials in two hoursor less. You'd think captioning wouldn't be a problem for anyone." Theinstitute said the average price for captioning a 30-second commercial isaround $300.

J. Walter Thompson, the WPP Group ad agency representing Ford, said itdoesn't caption "fast and fleeting" car commercials in local markets butdoes caption all national ad campaigns. Traffic Director Myriam Leimbacksaid the production schedule for the uncaptioned Ford Taurus commercial thatran during the Super Bowl was "down to the last minute," and the company"couldn't find time for two hours of captioning." The Taurus commercial didreceive captioning a week after the game, Leimback said.

BBDO client Pizza Hut, a unit of Tricon Global Restaurants, said timing wasa likely reason the restaurant chain made the uncaptioned list this year."All our commercials are coded for captioning, so this was definitely a timeissue," said Pizza Hut spokeswoman Stephanie Feaster. Many corporations alsosponsor the captioning of programming itself, seeing it as a goodwillgesture and a smart way to prominently feature their names in the "Closedcaptioning provided by ..." slot just preceding or following a show. TheNational Captioning Institute estimates that just about all of commercialnetwork programming is captioned and all of the top 25 syndicated programmesare captioned, while thousands of hours of other TV programming remainsuncaptioned.

For leading captioning providers such as Boston's WGBH EducationalFoundation, there is a real frustration with captioned programmes followedby uncaptioned commercials. "The reason a lot of spots aren't captioned isbecause of where captioning falls in the process of doing a commercial,"explained Susan Schneider, director of marketing at WGBH's Caption Center."Captioning is the last step before dubbing and shipping" and is oftenforgotten.

Originally developed as a time-coding device under the National Bureau ofStandards in the 1970s, real-time closed captioning was launched with a liveOscars broadcast in 1982. The 1990 Television Decoder Circuitry Act mandatedthat by 1993, all televisions 13 inches or larger manufactured for sale inthe US had to contain caption-decoding technology. By next year, virtuallyall US households with televisions will have caption-display capabilities,according to NCI projections.

Companies such as American Express said they recognized a "wave of thefuture" when the law passed. American Express spokeswoman Desiree Fish saidcaptioning has been a standard company practice for 10 years. "We want toget our message to as broad an audience as possible," she said. "Captioningcosts very little, and it's readily available, so why wouldn't we?"

Closed-captioned advertising also appears to breed loyalty. According to theNCI research, 53 per cent of viewers of captioned TV make a special effortto look for products that have captioned commercials, and 35 per cent switchbrands depending on captioning. Hallman of NCI added that the overall costand timing of captioning a commercial for a loyal audience is a fraction ofa multimillion-dollar ad budget.

-- The Wall Street Journal