§ Miss KirkbrideTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (1) if his Department will publish figures for the percentage of programmes subtitled on each of the digital terrestrial television channels since their launch in November 1998; [115258]
(2) if all channels are meeting their requirements for subtitling on digital terrestrial television; and what exceptions have been made to the requirements; [115257]
(3) in what ways his Department is monitoring the levels of subtitling on digital terrestrial television. [115256]
§ Janet AndersonThe Independent Television Commission (ITC) are responsible for monitoring the levels of subtitling on commercial digital terrestrial programme services. The Commission has made no exceptions to the requirements to provide subtitling. The BBC has a subtitling unit which monitors the output of subtitling on BBC digital services.
I understand from the ITC that they are currently evaluating data received from commercial digital terrestrial programme service licensees for the period 15 January to 31 December 1999.
The BBC have provided the following figures on the percentage of programmes subtitled of BBC digital terrestrial channels:
mislead the Committee. WNSL and the English Sports Council submitted papers to my Department on 17 June 1999 and 23 June 1999 respectively, reviewing the options to increase capacity at Wembley to 80,000 for athletics events. My officials met representatives of WNSL and Sport England to discuss these in detail on June 28 1999 and the then Minister for Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, (Mr. Banks) then met representatives from the ESC on 29 June 1999 to discuss the capacity issues. It was agreed at that meeting that increasing the capacity in football mode from the start of the project was not viable, but that the design should preserve the option to be upgraded later in line with Olympic requirements. This view was subsequently communicated to WNSL by officials from my Department.