CBC Risk Management & Mitigation 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A broadcast captioner's primary internet connection drops mid-program. What is the FIRST mitigation step?
- Call the client to report the outage
- Automatically switch to a pre-configured backup cellular connection (Correct answer)
- Pause captioning and wait for reconnection
- Log the incident and continue with offline mode
Correct answer: Automatically switch to a pre-configured backup cellular connection
A hot-standby cellular or secondary ISP connection should activate automatically to minimize caption blackout time.
Question 2: Which FCC regulation creates the greatest compliance risk for broadcasters who fail to provide accurate captions during live news?
- Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act
- 47 CFR Part 79 (Television Closed Captioning) (Correct answer)
- ADA Title III requirements
- FCC Emergency Alert System rules
Correct answer: 47 CFR Part 79 (Television Closed Captioning)
47 CFR Part 79 mandates closed captioning quality standards for television and carries significant FCC enforcement penalties.
Question 3: A captioner notices consistent audio dropouts from the broadcast feed every 90 seconds. This pattern most likely indicates:
- A problem with the captioner's local audio driver
- Periodic interference from a compression algorithm or satellite uplink cycle (Correct answer)
- Normal broadcast behavior during commercial breaks
- An issue with the captioner's internet connection
Correct answer: Periodic interference from a compression algorithm or satellite uplink cycle
Regularly timed audio dropouts often point to encoding, compression, or satellite uplink scheduling artifacts rather than random hardware failure.
Question 4: When assessing risk for a live sporting event caption contract, which factor should be weighted MOST heavily?
- The number of commercial breaks
- Fast-paced, unpredictable speech and crowd noise (Correct answer)
- The geographic location of the broadcast
- The length of the broadcast day
Correct answer: Fast-paced, unpredictable speech and crowd noise
Sports events feature rapid speaker changes, cheering, slang, and unpredictable speech patterns that dramatically increase caption error risk.
Question 5: A caption file delivered after broadcast is found to contain systemic word substitution errors. The risk category this represents is:
- Strategic risk
- Operational risk from quality control failure (Correct answer)
- Financial risk only
- Legal risk from FCC violation only
Correct answer: Operational risk from quality control failure
Systemic errors in a delivered caption file indicate a breakdown in the operational quality control process, an operational risk.
Question 6: Which backup strategy best protects a remote captioner against a local power outage during a live broadcast?
- Keeping a printed copy of likely scripts
- Using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) paired with a generator (Correct answer)
- Rescheduling the broadcast
- Relying on the broadcaster's own caption staff
Correct answer: Using an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) paired with a generator
A UPS provides immediate power continuity while a generator sustains long-term operation, together covering the full duration of most outages.
Question 7: Before signing a contract for live captioning of medical conference content, a captioner should PRIMARILY mitigate risk by:
- Requesting a higher per-word fee
- Obtaining specialized medical terminology glossaries in advance (Correct answer)
- Insisting on a delay buffer of at least 10 seconds
- Requiring the client to provide a script
Correct answer: Obtaining specialized medical terminology glossaries in advance
Medical terminology is dense and error-prone; pre-loading a custom dictionary reduces real-time accuracy risk significantly.
CBC Risk Management & Mitigation 2
A broadcast captioner's primary internet connection drops mid-program.
What is the FIRST mitigation step?