Confusing news ticker on Fox News
by Arthur
Posted on Monday, November 14th, 2005 at 7:12 pm CET
Since recently we get the American Fox News on our Casema digital television receiver here in the Netherlands, and I have noticed that they don’t seem to understand how the news ticker along the bottom of their screen should work. They put their Fox News logo at the end of every sentence, even if the same story continues in the next sentence.
For instance it wil say something like:
A man from New York suspected of killing three innocent people on Times Square has turned himself into authorities. [FOX NEWS] The three victims allegedly belonged to a rival gang. [FOX NEWS] The police have said that he turned himself in because he saw his picture on the news.
What’s wrong with this is that it looks like three seperate stories, but it is in fact one. When you’re watching Fox News and your eyes are drawn to the news ticker, you expect a new story to start when you see the logo come by. Instead you read something like “The police have said that he turned himself in …”. What does that mean ?!
CNN and BBC World don’t do this; they do it right, and hence their news ticker is much clearer and easier to understand. A couple of years ago I had another issue with CNN though. For a couple of months they had been having a show where viewers could call in or e-mail their comments. At the bottom of the screen it would say something like:
Belgium: Bill Clinton should step down as President
As a viewer, if you didn’t realize that this was a show that was based around every schmo’s opinion, you might think that the text on the screen was an official statement from the Belgian government! After a couple of months of seeing this, I finally decided to write an e-mail about it to CNN. I never got a reply, but a couple of days after I sent the email, they changed the graphics to the following, which was much better:
From the chat: Bill Clinton should step down as President (Belgium)
I always wondered if CNN changed their graphics for that show because of my e-mail or if it was all just a coincidence. I like to think that it had something to do with my note, so I will try it again and send an e-mail to Fox News about their news ticker 😉
Since recently we get the American Fox News on our Casema digital television receiver here in the Netherlands, and I have noticed that they don’t seem to understand how the news ticker along the bottom of their screen should work. They put their Fox News logo at the end of every sentence, even if the same story continues in the next sentence.
For instance it wil say something like:
A man from New York suspected of killing three innocent people on Times Square has turned himself into authorities. [FOX NEWS] The three victims allegedly belonged to a rival gang. [FOX NEWS] The police have said that he turned himself in because he saw his picture on the news.
What’s wrong with this is that it looks like three seperate stories, but it is in fact one. When you’re watching Fox News and your eyes are drawn to the news ticker, you expect a new story to start when you see the logo come by. Instead you read something like “The police have said that he turned himself in …”. What does that mean ?!
CNN and BBC World don’t do this; they do it right, and hence their news ticker is much clearer and easier to understand. A couple of years ago I had another issue with CNN though. For a couple of months they had been having a show where viewers could call in or e-mail their comments. At the bottom of the screen it would say something like:
Belgium: Bill Clinton should step down as President
As a viewer, if you didn’t realize that this was a show that was based around every schmo’s opinion, you might think that the text on the screen was an official statement from the Belgian government! After a couple of months of seeing this, I finally decided to write an e-mail about it to CNN. I never got a reply, but a couple of days after I sent the email, they changed the graphics to the following, which was much better:
From the chat: Bill Clinton should step down as President (Belgium)
I always wondered if CNN changed their graphics for that show because of my e-mail or if it was all just a coincidence. I like to think that it had something to do with my note, so I will try it again and send an e-mail to Fox News about their news ticker 😉