# Why does my ABC affiliate have Spanish closed-captioning on it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 12, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687 "2007-12-12T01:37:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/1 "2007-12-12T01:37:27Z")
I never ordered this, so why am I getting it, and only on ABC? Is horribly annoying when I am trying to watch a football game. How do the turn the durned thing off? I clicked through all the options in the cable box but could not locate any CC options. ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/2 "2007-12-12T02:04:02Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] I never ordered this, so why am I getting it, and only on ABC? Is horribly annoying when I am trying to watch a football game. How do the turn the durned thing off? I clicked through all the options in the cable box but could not locate any CC options. [/QUOTE] I get this too, sporadically, and I’m much further than you from any large population of hispanophones… I’ve never been able to figure it out. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/3 "2007-12-12T02:06:51Z")
Most TVs with closed captioning have at least two modes: CC1 and CC2. ABC uses CC1 for English and CC2 for Spanish. Go into your TV’s menu and look to see if it’s on CC2 or CC1. If it’s on CC2, set it to CC1 – if it still happens, then I don’t know what else it might be. ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/4 "2007-12-12T02:07:23Z")
[QUOTE=John DiFool] I clicked through all the options in the cable box but could not locate any CC options. [/QUOTE] Try the TV menu instead. All TVs in the US over 13" must, by federal law, have a CC decoder built in. Dunno why it only happens on one channel, nor why it’s in Spanish, but if you want to turn it off, there’s the place to look. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/5 "2007-12-12T02:08:25Z")
Showing closed captions is part of the TV decoding and not something added to the image by the cable company. You need to fiddle with your TV to determine how to turn it on and off. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/6 "2007-12-12T02:21:20Z")
“Closed” captioning is captioning you can turn off (unlike subtitles). As **Bambi Hassenpfeffer** mentioned, there are multiple captioning streams available (a total of four in the U.S.), and your TV can be set to show CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4, or no captions at all (some TVs can’t show CC3 or CC4, although most stations use CC3 for Spanish these days). There are also some text streams, but we can ignore them for the moment. If your TV is set to show CC2, you will see no English captions, but whenever you’re on a station that uses CC2 for Spanish, you’ll see those. To see English, set the TV for CC1. To see no captioning at all, turn it off completely. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/7 "2007-12-12T14:00:50Z")
I control closed captioning with the TV’s remote–not the one for Cable. BBCamerica gives clear instructions for us colonials who have problems with “English” English. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2007, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/8 "2007-12-12T19:02:32Z")
This is actually quite curious. Our TV sporadically turns the spanish CC on, with no input from us. It especially seems to do this when we’re recording Boston Legal, which is on ABC, no less. We had thought it was a peculiarity of our set; interesting that others seem to have this problem. It’s easy enough to turn off, but that doesn’t keep it from coming back now and then… ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/9 "2007-12-13T00:31:05Z")
[QUOTE=LawMonkey] This is actually quite curious. Our TV sporadically turns the spanish CC on, with no input from us. It especially seems to do this when we’re recording Boston Legal, which is on ABC, no less. We had thought it was a peculiarity of our set; interesting that others seem to have this problem. It’s easy enough to turn off, but that doesn’t keep it from coming back now and then… [/QUOTE] May be a glitch in the chips’ firmware, something that gets tripped by a voltage oscillation, or by some freak signal from the channel feed or from or the remote (as a total unsubstantiated speculation: it could be that some “universal” remotes do not quite match exactly the functions on every piece of your set-up, and ocassionally hitting some combination of keys in quick succession can be misunderstood by a faulty sensor) and sends to the TV’s processor the command “turn on CC2 on Channel 18” But yes, **John** , try using the TV set’s own controls, rather than the cable box. And it could be worse, your set could be automatically triggering SAP and then you’d get the soundtrack in Spanish (or in some places, unrelated transmissions from whoever is renting the excess channel bandwidth from the local station). ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/10 "2007-12-13T03:04:38Z")
I wish I had Spanish subtitles available. I could step down another satellite package. Actually, I wash cable has Telemundo etc. so I could dump the sat altogether. There was a show a year or two ago on Telemundo or similar that was said to be popular enough that it had English subtitles. Now that I think of it, it was “El Vuelo de la Aguila” I think, so that kind of casts “popularity” in doubt. ---
**Author:** ![Darryl\_Lict](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7cd45c/32.png) [@Darryl\_Lict](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darryl_Lict)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/11 "2007-12-13T03:18:31Z")
I’m glad someone mentioned this, as of course, I have the same intermittent problem. I’ve turned closed captioning off, and will observe the behavior. I get the feeling that the “glitch” I’m getting is inadvertently sitting on the CC button on my TV remote. ---
**Author:** ![Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Bambi\_Hassenpfeffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bambi_Hassenpfeffer)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/12 "2007-12-13T03:24:03Z")
[QUOTE=Balthisar] I wish I had Spanish subtitles available. I could step down another satellite package. Actually, I wash cable has Telemundo etc. so I could dump the sat altogether. [/QUOTE] Wow. Your cable doesn’t have Telemundo, Galavision, Telefutura, and Univision? That’s crazy. Those on our basic cable lineup, along with a 24-hour local news station in Spanish. Then there’s the Nuestros Canales package, which adds SUR, CNN en Español, Discovery en Español, Fox Sports en Español, MTV Tres, and MUN2. I suppose there’s not a lot of demand for canales en español in Michigan. ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/13 "2007-12-13T17:36:47Z")
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer] Wow. Your cable doesn’t have Telemundo, Galavision, Telefutura, and Univision? That’s crazy. Those on our basic cable lineup, along with a 24-hour local news station in Spanish. Then there’s the Nuestros Canales package, which adds SUR, CNN en Español, Discovery en Español, Fox Sports en Español, MTV Tres, and MUN2. I suppose there’s not a lot of demand for canales en español in Michigan. [/QUOTE] Heck, it was only just recently that DirecTV added Telefutura to the national lineup. It’d been available to certain localities for a long time. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-my-abc-affiliate-have-spanish-closed-captioning-on-it/429687/14 "2007-12-13T22:07:09Z")
Interestingly, since this post appeared, I’ve been seeing a strange little glitch on my captions. On several shows that I had prerecorded (I don’t recall what network), the captions will be happily playing along in English, and a line in Spanish will appear just for a moment next to or in the English. It only happened a half-dozen times. Our satellite reception is mediocre and I assumed it’s just not parsing the VBI data correctly. I suppose it’s possible they’re not encoding the CC1/CC2 transitions right.