The Wall Street Journal

December 13, 2001


Well-Chosen Words Are Worth TV Pictures for Sightless 'Viewers'

Ms. Thompson's Spare Narrative Makes Sense of the Action; Why
Broadcasters
Are Balky

by Barry Newman
Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal

Tulsa, Okla. -- On television for the blind, the pictures are almost as
good as they used to be on radio. "Highway to Heaven," an old TV series,
opened with some film of clouds taken from an airplane, and a shot of a
guy walking down a road. But for viewers of the reruns on TV for the
blind, it opens with this: "High above earth, billowy clouds float in a
blue sky. The bright sun flashes in the distance, sending fingers of
light across the heavens. The clouds gather, then part to reveal the
silhouette of a man walking slowly along a deserted highway." Michael
Landon wrote the script in 1984. In 2001, Dorothy Thompson wrote the
pictures. Ms. Thompson works for the Narrative Television Network, a
small Tulsa company, and spends her days in an office watching TV shows.
She concentrates on the scenery and the action, and converts them into
words. Later, an announcer reads the words onto a soundtrack so blind
people can follow what's going on. "It's important to know where we are,
who is there, who comes and goes, and all the little things that take
place you may not realize are important," Ms. Thompson says. "You have
to mention the clues without giving away the mystery." She lifts a white
mug from her desk, sips, places the mug back on the desk, folds her
hands and says, "Mint tea." To the mind's eye, descriptions of the sort
Ms. Thompson writes look more like baseball than theater -- less play
than play-by-play. Their screenings have lingered on the fringe of the
TV world, mostly rerun channels and public broadcasting, for more than a
decade. Now they're almost ready for prime time. By order of the Federal
Communications Commission, the big networks must splice four hours of
radio-quality pictures into their shows each week starting next April.
They can do it using the same extra audio track that lets stations
broadcast baseball in Spanish. Watching TV, the FCC reasoned, is so
bound up with the American identity that poor eyesight prevents 12
million people from sitting around and taking an active role in the life
of the nation. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the blind got all their
pictures from the radio. "Maybe most TV is disgusting, but when you
can't partake in it, you're frustrated," says Jim Stovall, who is
president of NTN and Ms. Thompson's boss. He is 43 years old and was
blind by 29. "I'd like the opportunity," Mr. Stovall says, "to be as
disgusted as you are." The main trade groups of the television and movie
industries, however, doubt that couch potatoes with weak eyes should
have a right to government-mandated mental images. In a federal court
suit to block the order, they contend that the FCC rule is not only
unconstitutional "forced speech," it verges on a kind of compelled
creative interference. "Can you imagine the video-described version of
'Annie Hall?'" says Robert Corn-Revere, the industries' lawyer. "Can you
imagine anyone writing it but Woody Allen? You're talking about a whole
new art form that fundamentally changes the nature of the work." Is it a
creative act to look at stuff and represent it with alphabetic symbols?
Not in the view of the National Television Video Access Coalition, 17
pro-blind non-profit and consumer organizations that have entered the
suit in support of the FCC. Their lawyer, Don Evans, sees the process
more as a "translation" of sights and sound effects into "a separate
communicative format," namely words. Machines and former court reporters
type the TV captions for the deaf that the FCC also requires; nobody
calls that creative. Yet the job description at NTN does have more to
it: In the 13 years since he has started the company, Mr. Stovall hasn't
found a machine -- or many humans -- with the equipment to turn scenes
into sentences. "Had a literary type once," he says. "Couldn't come
close. Always talking about the wrong thing. He'd write, 'The silver
belt buckle shines,' and I'd say, 'Yeah, but that guy just got shot!'"
Mr. Stovall, then again, has worked to imbue his eight employees with a
constitutional spirit of noncreativity. NTN takes in $6 million a year,
half from grants, half from cable stations. (Boston's WGBH has been its
one competitor, narrating for public television and for Turner Classic
Movies.) "This is the Army," "Behave Yourself" and "Of Human Bondage"
appear on its movie list, as well as 171 episodes of "Bonanza" and 50 of
"Andy Griffith." Every word-picture reflects Mr. Stovall's strictures on
scribblers. To paraphrase: Least is best. Show, don't tell. Make it fit.
Be accurate. And stay out of the way. "It's very creative," Dorothy
Thompson is saying. "It really is. We have to be very creative in the
way we share our information." Ms. Thompson sits behind her office desk.
In a corner, a TV set shows a video of "Highway to Heaven." A computer
screen to her right displays some writing. With one hand on a remote
control and the other on a mouse, Ms. Thompson tracks the action. "
Later," she types on a keyboard, "Jonathan is following Leslie across a
yard. They step to a porch where a sign reads 'For Rent.' She takes a
slip of paper from the doorway and reads it." Ms. Thompson stops the
tape, plays it over, and types, "She takes a slip of paper from behind a
small placard and reads it." Ms. Thompson rewinds again and presses
"freeze." Squinting, she types, "She takes a slip of paper from a
manager's placard and reads it." The manager, it so happens, isn't home.
Before meeting Jim Stovall in 1995, Ms. Thompson had no experience with
the blind. She wrote "small, positive notes" for the newsletter of a
nutritional supplements company, worked at the U.S. Consulate in Saudi
Arabia (her husband was in the Army), catalogued land surveys in
Missouri and proofed insurance advertising in Omaha. She grew up in
Kansas, listening to "Inner Sanctum" on the radio. She is 55 years old,
has short brown hair, and her dress is black. In six years at NTN, Ms.
Thompson has described nearly every episode of "The Streets of San
Francisco," "Matlock," "Paper Chase," "Ironside," "Gomer Pyle" and
"Combat!" Stretching in front of her now are 100 episodes of "Highway to
Heaven." "We can never say what we think it means," she says. "We can't
interpret or explain. We don't tell the audience what to feel." For
colors, she sticks to green, red, blue and yellow. She has a copy of "
What's What" on her desk to find out whether a window is casement or
double-hung, and whether a yellow flower is a marigold or a narcissus.
When a scene changes, and she writes "meanwhile," says Ms. Thompson, "it
had darn well better be meanwhile." If an actor gets angry, she won't
say it; that would be an opinion. So teeth grit, eyes bulge, faces
redden. If a fight breaks out, Ms. Thompson will bite her own lip: All
that crashing and banging must be explained. Car chases? Ms. Thompson
rolls her eyes. "I had a 'Combat!' once," she says. "The whole episode
was men pushing a cannon across Germany. How many ways can you say 'push
the cannon'? They'd get to the top of a hill and slip and start again.
But, in the end, we got that cannon to where it needed to be." More
often, Ms. Thompson has mere moments to elaborate on her observations.
Narration must never overlap sound effects or dialogue. Counting her
syllables, she must literally write between the lines. In an episode of
"The Streets of San Francisco," as the camera panned across a room where
a corpse lay on the floor, the outline of a missing letter-opener
appeared on a dusty desk. The dialogue was solid; there was no place to
interpose the crucial clue. "A letter-opener is gone," she says,
fingering the remote control and turning toward the TV. "It would have
been lovely to give them that piece of information." Ms. Thompson
presses "play." Back on "Highway to Heaven," a man called Mark walks
across a room, exits through a screen door and lets it slam behind him
just as his sister, Leslie, says "Will you be home for supper?" From
outside, Mark shouts, "I don't know!" Leslie sobs. Music rises. The
screen goes dark. "She lowers her head and covers her face with her
hand," Ms. Thompson types, then realizes she didn't explain the slam or
get Mark out the door. She types: "Mark leaves. She lowers her head and
covers her face with her hand," then watches the scene again. "He's
already out the door by the time I say he leaves," she says. Ms.
Thompson puts on wire-rimed glasses, knits her brow and looks at that
door slamming 10 more times. "I know!" she says. "She watches him leave,
then covers her face with her hand." She types it, mumbles the line, and
says, "People have to hear what they can't see. Now the door slams, he's
out, and I'm happy." Ms. Thompson takes off her glasses. She raises her
head, and the corners of her mouth turn upward.


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