Today is a gripe post. It’s about news crawlers. Sometimes they are called news tapes. They are the things that scroll across the bottom of your screen and report news and other things that are not being talked about in the main part of the screen. That is usually they’re not. But not always.
I admit that they serve a purpose. If you are not particularly interested in what is being talked about but don’t want to change the channel because some other news will be discussed in a moment, then the tape can actually provide some other news. But not always.
My biggest problem with these tapes is that they decrease the overall size of the viewing screen. By the time you add two lines for the network identification and the name of the person shown on the screen at that time, and maybe a weather ticker added just for other info, and oh, by the way, over in the corner is a large digital clock with a title counting down something important like a government shutdown, or a news conference and the like, well, you have lost about a third of your screen.
It gets so ridiculous sometimes I just try to find something on TV that doesn’t have anything or at least very little. It used to that sports were okay. But not anymore.
Between the ads and statistics, the screen gets pretty cluttered. Major League Baseball is the worst with all of the stats flashing all over the screen and staying until the slowest person in America can read it.
The Premier Soccer League is one of the best. Much of their advertisements are running on the actual field of play. The shirts of the players have their sponsors like NASCAR drivers while running around the field of play along the fence barrier is normally a computer-driven moving banner promoting something, usually the home team’s sponsors.
That’s why many times I just like to look at an old painting, or even better, an actual outdoor scene.
I wonder what the Mona Lisa would look like with a banner or two across the bottom.
(Tahoma 13)
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