TV NEWS AND LOWERING THE QUALITY OF LOWER THIRDS

Delivery of information is critical in media operations. If important details are not passed across in a clear manner, then the entire point of communication is undermined. It doesn't make much sense to spend so much time and resources in news gathering and processing, then do a shoddy presentation. Such has led to the lowering of the quality of TV news lower thirds.

Why should a viewer struggle so much to read what is being splashed across the TV screen, as part of the editorial content of a news story?

The lower third story tags are supposed to provide additional context to a story, or even enable one to immediately get the gist of a news item, from the choice of key words on display.

Moreover, a viewer could be in a place where the TV is on but the volume is turned down, and so the on screen text acts as valuable conduit of pertinent details about a news story, in summary form.

The challenge for news producers is extracting critical information from a story, and deploying the resulting text in a limited space.

In some news production systems, the software automatically leaves out any excess characters and you either end up with an incomplete set of information, with the missing text making it difficult to understand, or an unintelligible mash up of pseudo-characters.

Other systems accommodate the extra characters but also in the process, reduce the font size.

This is great, but only to the point of not making viewers squint, as they try to navigate through the now miniaturised body of text, battling for a breathing space.

That is not a favourable bottom line!