About Our Company
MCS, as we are also known as, was formed in 1987 by Patricia Ferrier of Los Angeles, and was the first woman-owned closed captioning company formed in the U.S. It remains the largest privately held woman-owned closed-captioning company in the U.S. MCS is a pioneer in the implementation of real-time captioning. In 1991, CNN selected Media Captioning Services to provide their real-time closed-captioning, and by 1994 MCS was captioning four of their networks. MCS, in 2001, was closed-captioning the events of 9/11 on CNBC, Fox News Channel, and CNN networks simultaneously. MCS was instrumental in using innovative technologies at the time, Digital 56k, frame relay, direct circuits for delivering real-time data from our California offices to our broadcast and cable network clients.
Despite consolidations in the cable industry, and other personnel changes which affected our business, MCS withstood these challenges and maintained strong business relationships with key networks in the broadcast business . As of 2019, MCS has closed-captioned over 1,021,000 hours of national and local news and sports.
Why are we different?
Experience — MCS has closed-captioned over one million hours and acquired the experience to solve issues that may arise. We have closed-captioned every major news real-time event carried on video programming, and amassed through this experience a wealth of knowledge on operational practices and procedures to use in the real-time closed-captioning process.
Corporate culture — MCS has developed over our history processes and procedures for dealing effectively with clients specifically related to captioning issues which may occur, quality evaluation, and effective scheduling and deployment of captioners.
Conducive to innovation — As a company, MCS has implemented and demonstrated the ability to use new technologies in the closed-captioning process, whether that be digital 56k circuits, frame relay, among others. MCS was helpful in working with EEG to develop the iCap Internet captioning system, long before problems arose with common carriers moving away from supporting their copper infrastructure. MCS has developed novel ways of using the iCap backbone to deliver closed-captioning data to different encoder equipment, enabling use of the Internet to deliver caption data to a wide variety and number of stations.
Collaborative, not hierarchical management process.
MCS management is involved on a day-to-day basis in management, closed-captioning and interaction with staff. We encourage feedback from all employees and independent contractors on issues that are of concern, and ways to improve captioning practices. At MCS, Best Practices for captioning is an ongoing, developing process. Few companies in the real-time closed- captioning business have the managing principals involved on a day-to-day basis in all aspects of the key principles involved in managing a captioning business which includes closed-captioning, financial management, marketing, closed-captioning management and staffing.
We strive to create the highest quality, near verbatim transcription of audio-to-text on multiple platforms to promote accessibility.
Our value proposition
We create captions and streaming text on multiple platforms to provide the highest quality at most cost-effective pricing.
Our competencies
Real-time closed-captioning and creating streaming text on broadcast video, Internet streamed video of sports, news, news conferences.
Particular specialties
All live sporting events, financial conferences, legislative hearings, live, breaking news, business news.
Our expertise
Live Captioning of Fox News Channel, Fox Business News, C-SPAN2, CBS Sports, The Florida Channel, among others, have enabled MCS to create a wealth of experience and body of knowledge, institutionalized procedures for emulating the highest quality captioning for our existing clients, and new clients.
Quality is our business DNA.