END DISTRACTION. CLEAR UP THE CLUTTER. STOP THE CRAWL.

The news crawl or "ticker," once used solely for emergency updates such as winter weather advisories, flash flood warnings, and other impending disasters, is now a permanent fixture on all major news networks. Where once the crawl was only occasionally used to inform the public, it has now been rendered ineffective by its constant trip across the bottom of television screens, and it's annoying the heck out of me! It's time to stop the crawl, or at least make it smaller. Click Here for more information on how we can end the annoyance.

Take the duct tape that is no doubt lining your windows and recycle it by sticking it along the bottom of your TV screen. :-)

Dave

Its importance was (and is) more for function than content. Its fucntion today is much more than it used to be. It gives me, a conumser, more info, on my timetable, without having to wait for the next segment about the subject. It's always there - headlines, weather, stocks, sports, etc. Yes, the ubiquitous web site references are annoying, but the omnipresent ticker is an innovation worhty of an evolving society. The means for alerting the public about emergencies - of any nature - remain extant: they simply have changed form.

I agree w/ Lee, but the Eng. really needs to B cleaned up on those things. There grmmr is horrendous and the abv'td words cause far too much cnfsn. It appears that some 18/m/mo intern took the step from AOL chat rms and infiltrated the video air waves. I ask networks stop abv't'g.