News ticker
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A news ticker (sometimes referred to as a "crawler") is a small screen space on news television networks dedicated to presenting headlines or minor pieces of news. It may also refer to a long, thin scoreboard-style display seen around the front of some offices or public buildings.
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[edit] TV news tickers
[edit] History
Though modern and efficient news tickers were not popularized in the United States until September 11, 2001, the first record of a news ticker as part of a regular broadcast is from NBC's Today show on its debut edition, January 14, 1952. Without the benefit of computer-generated headlines and graphics, the ticker was vastly different than the one we would know today. The Today ticker was an actual piece of paper with typewritten headlines superimposed on the lower third of the screen. The ticker was never very successful as a communications tool, and was dropped not long thereafter.
By the 1980s, in northern parts of the United States, many local television stations used a ticker placed over morning local and network newscasts to pass along information on school closings due to weather. Severe weather watch and warning information was also commonly run on local station tickers. In both cases, the start of the ticker's cycle was often accompanied by an attention signal, such as warning tones, a small jingle from the station's news theme or network (such as the NBC Chimes), or either the station's calls or channel number in Morse code[citation needed] .
One of the first networks to regularly utilize a ticker was CNN Headline News. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ticker featured stock prices during the daytime, and sports scores during the evening and weekend. CNBC also debuted a ticker featuring stock prices during business hours. By the mid-1980s, ESPN featured an update ticker at the top and bottom of each hour, scrolling up-to-the-minute sports scores and news. By 1996, spin-off network ESPN2 debuted a ticker, dubbed the "BottomLine," which featured non-stop sports scores and news nearly twenty-four hours a day. ESPNEWS, after a 2000 redesign of their on-air look became the first network to keep their ticker going during commercial breaks.
Several European news channels have used tickers as part of their on-air design for years. For example, German news channel n-tv has had a news ticker since its launch in 1992.
While tickers had been used occasionally by other networks over the years, it was the September 11 attacks of 2001 that made the ticker a ubiquitous part of the television news experience.[citation needed] Needing a way to provide a continuous stream of vital but repetitive emergency information to viewers, Fox News Channel placed a ticker on-screen at 10:49 a.m. CNN launched its own ticker at 11:11 a.m., and MSNBC started one at approximately 2:00 p.m. Although the need for attack-related tickers lasted only a few weeks, the management at all three major U.S. news channels quickly decided that news tickers would help increase viewership amongst viewers with the ability to process multiple simultaneous streams of information. As a result, the tickers have been permanent features on all three channels ever since, except during some documentary programming, presidential speeches, or select other programs.
In Australia, the first major use of news tickers also occurred in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Since the initial introduction, morning programs Sunrise and Today have kept tickers. While visible on other channels, tickers are rarer and more specific: ABC TV News at Midday has a stock ticker while Sky News Australia normally features a stream of weather information.
The use of news tickers has also been parodied on a number of programs, including an episode of The Simpsons from 2003 (Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington), as well as a sketch on Saturday Night Live. Films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember sometimes place jokes within news crawls seen on screen. The Onion News Network uses a parody ticker to offer jokes in its online newscasts. The Australian show CNNNN went a step further: although it featured a joke news ticker throughout the show, one episode had a news ticker summarizing the initial news ticker, as well as one for the sight impaired, which covered the whole screen.
[edit] Current uses
The presentation of headlines or other information in a news ticker has become a common element of many different news networks. The use of the ticker has been different on a number of different channels, financial news channels using two or more tickers progressing at different speeds, displaying stock prices and business headlines. Networks with a focus on sports often use a slightly different system, where scores and status of current and finished games are displaced one by one, along with minor sports highlights. News networks commonly use a setup in which news headlines are scrolled across the bottom half of the screen, though some variations have formed, such as CNN International presenting them without a scrolling effect.
Usage of the scroller has also grown in a number of local news stations, used during hours of severe weather to provide information about storms and areas effected by them, in addition to other uses, such as presented school delays and cancellations during winter weather in some regions, and the presentation of headlines alike to the general news networks.
Due to their prevalence currently, they have been occasionally been made targets of pranks and vandalism. For example, a North Carolina station used a ticker where viewers could submit relevant information such as school closings or traffic delays via telephone or Internet, which would be displayed automatically without human screening and intervention. In February of 2004, a news ticker on News 14 Carolina was exploited to display humorous messages, including the infamous "All your base are belong to us." [1]
[edit] Building news tickers
The most famous news ticker display is the "zipper" that circles One Times Square in New York City. The New York Times erected the first such display in 1928, and now several buildings in midtown Manhattan feature such a display. A similar display appears on the exterior of the Fox News/News Corporation headquarters in the west extension of Manhattan's Rockefeller Center. Another ticker, displaying the latest stock details, is also located in Times Square.
The new Reuters building at Canary Wharf also has a news ticker and stock ticker for the NYSE, NASDAQ and LSE.
When NBC renovated 10 Rockefeller Center to accommodate the Today show in 1994, a red-LED ticker was added to the perimeter of the building at the juncture of the first and second floors. The ticker is visible to spectators in Rockefeller Plaza and passersby on West 49th Street and updates continuously, even when the show is off the air.
[edit] External links
- EasyByte News Ticker - A Desktop News Ticker, mostly used for Enterprise Notifications
- InfoRSS - A popular Firefox addons News Ticker
- AHN News Agency - A popular and leading content provider for news and tickers
