The FCC’s has published in the Federal Register certain aspects of its November decision on closed captioning – most notably the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking asking if a broadcaster’s multicast streams should each count as a separate "channel" potentially exempt from closed captioning requirements if that channel doesn’t bring in more than $3 million in annual revenue.  Seemingly, each of the multicast streams are what one would conventionally think of as a channel, yet the Commission has asked for comments on this issue – comments to be filed by February 12.  If the Commission was to determine that a multicast stream was not a separate channel, the captioning obligations would apply if the station, in all of its cumulative operations, had revenues of $3 million.   This could impose significant costs on innovative programming done on these multicast streams.  The November decision also clarified certain other rules, and adopted certain processes for dealing with complaints about captioning issues (processes yet effective as they have not been approved by the Office of Management and Budget for compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act).  Davis Wright Tremaine has published a memo providing more information about the effect of the Federal Register publication.  Our summary of the November decision itself is available here