>>> DUB DUB DUBBING
Congratulations to our MLS department. Now dubbing a movie based on a famous Gogol novel! Yelena Makarczyk is working with one of our customers to provide English voiceover to a Russian-language movie. We're looking forward to sharing our subtitle and lip sync skills with customers. Stay tuned for more details.

>>>MARCH MADNESS AT VITAC
At VITAC, March Madness means more than brackets and winnings. Here we've got a department focused on captioning the annual NCAA Men's Division 1 Basketball Championship. Look for our captions on all TNT, truTV and TBS games, starting today at 12:30 with Old Dominion vs. Butler on truTV. On this St. Patrick's Day 2011, we toast VITAC's sports captioning department, schedulers and captioners. (And for the record, our employees pick Ohio State or Kansas to take it all). See the full schedule here!

>>>READ CAPTIONS ACROSS AMERICA WEDNESDAY MARCH 2
The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) launched the first "Read Captions Across America" campaign in 2006 as a part of the National Education Association’s (NEA) annual "Read Across America" initiative. This event is the nation’s largest reading celebration, focusing our attention on motivating children to read in addition to their mastering basic skills read it here! . Bill Stark explains what captions are, how they act as an instant reading incentive, and what reading benefits can occur from the use of captioning. The DCMP’s support to teachers, librarians, and others in making the activity a success is also overviewed.

>>>VITAC ANNOUNCES PROMOTIONS IN OUR OFFLINE CAPTIONING DEPARTMENT
VITAC Director of Offline captioning Dina Smith has promoted two of her most dedicated offline captioners.

Nathan Appel, formerly Lead Captioner, is now a Shift Supervisor. Nathan joined the company in 2005 and is responsible for integrating a large volume of short-form programming into VITAC's already-busy schedule. With Nate's guidance, VITAC is now responsible for closed captioning over 600 commercials per month, often delivering captions within 30 minutes of receiving video from our customers. As shift Supervisor, Nathan will oversee captioners on the all shifts.

Also promoted is April Marutz from Senior Captioner to Lead Captioner. April is respected for her willingness to pitch in whenever needed, especially with the abundant amount of captioning our customers sent us in the fourth quarter of 2010 (VITAC added two full networks to our plate in three months - HUB and OWN). April is the first employee seen in our first YouTube video. Her customer service and coordination experience, in addition to outstanding speed and accuracy skills, will continue to benefit the VITAC swing shift in 2011.

>>>VITAC CAPTIONS THE SUPER BOWL
VITAC is captioning Super Bowl XLV this Sunday on Fox. For the first time ever, the entire game AND all of the commercials will be accessible to viewers who rely on captioning. Read more

>>> VITAC'S 25TH ANNIVERSARY
VITAC, the largest closed captioning and media access company in the United States, is celebrating its 25th Anniversary in 2011. The celebration started with a party for Pittsburgh-area employees on Friday, January 14th, and will continue through the remainder of the year.

VITAC was founded in 1986 as CaptionAmerica, a small company in Pittsburgh, PA, with one captioning contract for KDKA local news and a huge commitment to the new world of closed captioning.

VITAC now has over 250 employees, captioning over 170,000 hours of live programming and delivering more than 35,000 offline projects annually (nearly 500 hours a day).

>>> VITAC TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FCC'S VPEAAC
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has appointed three VITAC employees to serve a two-year term on the Video Programming and Emergency Access Advisory Committee (VPEAAC), an advisory committee required by the Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (the Accessibility Act). The new member is Tim Taylor with alternates Bob Beyer and Heather York. Read more here

>>> HELLOWEEN
Paranormal Activity has been spotted here - expect some creepy stuff on the site this week . We'll have a Halloween Contest, a ghostly team page and a page dedicated to the classic horror film "Night of the Living Dead," captioned and audio-described by VITAC and its partners. The American Council of the Blind's streaming radio station, ACB Radio , streams audio feeds to blind and low-vision people in over 70 countries. VITAC's audio-described "Night of the Living Dead" has been chosen to air on Halloween, at 8:00 pm EST. Pretty cool.

>>> VITAC CELEBRATES
What an honor! Heather York, VITAC's Director of Marketing, will be in attendance at the White House today for the enactment of the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

>>> VITAC IN POST GAZETTE
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette features VITAC in CAPTIONS ON THE WEB article. "Videos posted on the Web reach a global audience. But often a large portion of that audience is excluded from the full experience because they can't hear the audio and the videos don't have captions." Read more

>>> VITAC CAPTIONS YOUTUBE
VITAC has qualified to provide captioning for YouTube! VITAC Employees created this video to stress the importance of captioning on YouTube. More details on our YouTube page here.

>>> WORLD CUP FANS
ESPN is streaming live World Cup matches with VITAC captions on ESPN3.com! VITAC worked with ESPN to develop this simulcast captioning solution. Captions on the website can be turned on and off and are live, just like those on TV, making the Internet feeds accessible to all!

>>> CLOSED CAPTIONING FOR SUPERNATURAL BROUGHT TO YOU BY....
Read VITAC offline captioner Kate's article about captioning Supernatural, and how her job turned her into a fan, at the Winchester Family Business fan site.

>>> WE LOVE "LIFE"
VITAC is captioning the critically acclaimed series "Life" on the Discovery Channel! From the creators of the popular "Planet Earth" series, "Life" explores our planet in a series of 11 episodes, airing Sundays on the Discovery Channel. The show debuted with the network's best ratings for a series in a decade and is being captioned by our outstanding team of offline captioners.

"We're thrilled to be a part of another historical documentary," said Director of Offline Dina Smith. "We are not only the caption-service provider for "Life," we are fans of the program, too."

"The way they shot it was fascinating," said Offline Supervisor Monica Yeater. "It had absolutely beautiful shots while being engaging and informative."

Watch the series and VITAC's captions Sunday nights on Discovery.

>>> CAPTIONING SNOWMAGEDDON
VITAC's emergency preparedness plan was successfully put into action on Saturday, February 6th, as Smowmaggeddon hit the mid-Atlantic, burying our Canonsburg, PA headquarters and Arlington, VA office in over two feet of snow. We lost primary power in addition to losing two out of three connectivity paths at headquarters -- but our third stayed strong -- proving that redundancy is worth the cost! We juggled some of our at-home captioners that had power outages and the in-house crew of captioners and production coordinators slept on cots, navigated by backup lighting, swept snow off satellite dishes and lived on vending machine food. Result? In the first (and worst) 32-hours, we captioned nearly 600 hours of live programming with on-air uptime rate of 99.51% and all our offline files were delivered on time.

VITAC has the most dedicated team in the business. We thank our captioners, production coordinators, schedulers and engineers who make captions happen, through wind, rain, sleet, snow ... and blizzards !

>>> INNOVATIVE WEB TOOLS MAKE OUR CLIENTS HAPPY!
You asked and we answered. We heard that you don't want to call repeatedly to check on the progress of your project. With VITRACKER, our customers can follow the progress of their video through each step of the captioning process -- from "in production" to "waiting for director's out" to "encoding now" you can follow your program through each step of the captioning process. Try out VITRACKER on your next job. Of course, we're always available if you'd like to call and check as well - 24/7/365.

>>> VITAC LAUNCHES NEW WEBSITE!
The new www.vitac.com just launched, including a wealth of innovative interactive web tools. Please read more in our president's message and follow us on Twitter to receive frequent news about the nation's greatest captioning company.

>>>VITAC TO CAPTION 2010 VANCOUVER OLYMPICS
VITAC has once again been selected as the exclusive provider of English and Spanish captioning during NBC's coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games. We will provide captioning for all Olympics programming on NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Oxygen, Universal HD and Telemundo. Look for us, starting with the February 12 Opening Ceremonies!

>>> VITAC MAKES H1N1 FLU VIDEO ACCESSIBLE!
VITAC is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well to provide near-instantaneous turnaround for H1N1 video announcements for the CDC and flu.gov websites. Just goes to show that captioning can be added efficiently without losing time. See our samples on You Tube