RTV Drenthe can continue to subtitle the news program Drenthe Nu. The province of Drenthe is making 42,500 euros available for this.
The money from the province is a temporary contribution pending a fixed amount from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.
Deputy Yvonne Turenhout says she thinks subtitles are very important: “It is good that everyone can participate in society and that everyone matters. With this subsidy we want to ensure that the news is accessible to all our residents, including those who have difficulty hearing.”
Turning on subtitles works in the same way as on national channels such as NPO1 and NPO2. Viewers can search for Teletext page 888 during the broadcast of Drenthe Nu to activate the subtitles. The live broadcast of the news program at 5 p.m. will not have subtitles, but they are available for the repeats of Drenthe Nu that are broadcast after 6 p.m.
The subtitles are automatically generated by a computer. After the broadcast, an employee of RTV Drenthe checks and corrects the texts created by the system, so that the subtitles appear correctly on television an hour later. The Drenthe dialect is not properly recognized by the computer, the subtitles are added manually.
In Drenthe, about five percent of adults have difficulty hearing. Due to the aging population, this number will probably increase in the future. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science is currently assessing how much money is needed nationally for subtitling.