By now every deaf pilot must be aware that since January 1, 2001, cable television's Weather Channel is closed-captioning its reports 20 hours a day, from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. EST.

The Weather Channel is the first cable television outlet to provide such comprehensive captioning of its programming, and is several years ahead of the captioning rules set by the Federal Communications Communication.

Not only deaf pilots but all the rest of the 28 million Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing ought to applaud the Weather Channel's action.

"The procedure to create closed captioning for programming on the Weather Channel is very labor intensive and requires particular attention to detail," said a press release announcing the move. "Because the TWC on-camera meteorologists are so well-versed and knowledgeable about weather, and because of the extremely changeable nature of weather systems, the presenters 'ad-lib' most of their presentation rather than reading from a script. This means the closed captioning must be done 'live' by operators at the National Captioning Institute (NCI) tuned into TWC, who simultaneously key in the words as they are spoken. These are instantaneously transmitted with TWC's satellite feed and decoded by television sets equipped for closed captioning."

Currently, only the hours between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. (Eastern Time) are not captioned. Local forecasts will not be closed-captioned because they already exist in a reader-friendly text and graphic presentation.