Ticker
The streaming text crawl. Used to layer extra information without stealing focus.
- COINED
- 1990s
- TAXONOMY
- EDITING
- RELATED
- 4
- TEMPLATES
- 0
The ticker is the streaming text crawl along the bottom of a broadcast frame. CNN's headlines, Bloomberg's stock prices, ESPN's scores. It scrolls right-to-left or left-to-right at a measured pace - fast enough that new information keeps arriving, slow enough that the viewer can actually read it.
Tickers exist because broadcast has unused screen real estate and infinite data. A news anchor can talk about one story; a ticker can deliver thirty headlines in the same minute. The audience tunes most of it out, but absorbs more than they realize.
In modern video, tickers are mostly stylistic - they read as "this is news" or "this is sports." Drop one onto a parody video and you've sold the gag without writing a line. Drop one onto a serious documentary and you've shattered the tone.
Broadcast news, sports overlays, eSports streams. Parody of any of the above.
Almost anything else. Tickers carry strong genre associations.
Terms next to this one.
Generic name for on-screen text generated by a character generator. The hardware vendor became the noun.
Name-and-title text overlay in the bottom third of the frame. Broadcast TV's name tag.
Full-width promotional graphic across the screen. Streaming-TV native.
The portion of the frame guaranteed to display on any TV or platform. Keep critical info here.