WIN Television breaches captioning record-keeping rules

WIN Television Qld has breached broadcasting rules after failing to retain records needed to assess captioning compliance for six episodes of Chicago Med.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority investigated the episodes, broadcast between 19 and 31 January 2026, following a complaint about the program’s captioning.

The ACMA found WIN breached record-keeping requirements under the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and, as a result, a condition of its commercial television broadcasting licence.

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Captioning complaint

The investigation followed a complaint alleging unsatisfactory captioning was “happening again” on Chicago Med.

The complainant had previously raised concerns about the program in 2024, resulting in an earlier breach finding.

WIN provided the ACMA with recordings of the six episodes on 23 February 2026.

The regulator initially found, on a preliminary basis, that captioning issues across the episodes were significant enough for the captioning service to fail the required standard.

However, WIN subsequently advised that the recordings supplied to the ACMA did not accurately represent the broadcasts because of an issue with its compliance logging system.

WIN said the system had not recorded caption colour data and there were indications caption timing may have differed between the recordings and the broadcasts.

The network told the ACMA:

“As the broadcasts in question took place in January 2026, both the original transport stream data and the proxy recordings have now passed their respective retention periods and are no longer available. This means WIN is unable to provide recordings of the actual broadcast for the ACMA's review”

The ACMA subsequently found it could not determine whether WIN had complied with captioning standards because accurate broadcast records were not available.

Record-keeping breach

Under the Broadcasting Services Act, broadcasters must retain relevant audio-visual records for at least 30 days after a program is broadcast. If a captioning complaint is made within that period, broadcasters must retain the records for at least 90 days from the broadcast date.

WIN advised that its compliance logging system retained recordings that accurately captured caption formatting for up to seven days. After that, it retained lower-resolution proxy copies, which did not consistently preserve attributes including colour and positioning.

The ACMA found WIN did not make audio-visual recordings sufficient to allow its compliance with the relevant provisions of the Act to be readily assessed.

It also found the failure amounted to a breach of WIN’s licence conditions.

WIN did not dispute the factual basis of the findings and said it had taken steps with its broadcast playout provider and technology suppliers to address the record-keeping issue.

The ACMA is considering its regulatory response and will publish the outcome once finalised.