What's a chyron?

It's that thing at the bottom of your TV screen
Update: This word was added in February 2017.

Whether to promote other programs, give some backstory, or get viewers involved on social media, graphics and text show up more and more frequently on top of the shows on our TV screens. There’s a word for them: chyron. Although it's often used generically, it actually comes from the name of the company whose software allows television producers to add those crawling words, phrases, and images to their broadcasts.

chyron-thingies-on-your-tv-screen
Here's a typical example of its use:

If you were driven nuts by the twenty-four-hour shouters, if you couldn't bear to watch any more flashing chyrons and Sam the Eagle gravitas, here was your catharsis. Like "Get Your War On," David Rees's post-9/11 comic strip, "The Daily Show" became a gathering place for the disenchanted – a place that let viewers know they weren’t crazy.

– Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker, February 23, 2015

Chyron is pronounced \KIE-ron\ and is frequently seen lower-case. Early generic examples show attributive use, as a noun modifying another noun:

The names would be one more line on the chyron graphics that appear at video's end.

– Richard Harrington, The Washington Post, April 19, 1989

The chyron operator would then punch the stats into a control room machine used to generate the bar of information viewers see at the bottom of their TV screens.

– Alaina Kainz, Ottawa Citizen, June 1, 1994

Chyron is used frequently and in many different publications; it's a word that is likely to be added to the dictionary sometime soon.

If it is added, it will join the ranks of trademarks that have become established as generic terms. Some of these are easy to identify; think of Q-tip, Band-Aid, or Spam. Some become verbs (and therefore generic), like xerox or google. And some are barely remembered as trademarks today, such as heroin and granola.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/chyron-thingie...

They’ve become a facet of almost every news broadcast, as familiar as the anchor sitting behind a desk. Within moments of the start of a newscast or panel discussion, the info-billboards on the lower third of the TV screen begin their silent unfurling:

• “German ambassador to U.S. responds to Trump’s NATO summit slams,” reads the headline on CNN.

• “With friends like these: Trump remarks irk some NATO members,” says the banner on Fox News at almost the same time.

• “Retired U.S. general: Putin is ‘happiest guy on the planet’ after Trump’s comments,” the caption beneath MSNBC’s talking heads declares a moment or two later.

CHYRONS INCREASINGLY USED TO COMBAT FALSEHOODS (USUALLY IN PARENTHESES)

CHYRON UPDATE

The on-screen banners known as chyrons (kai-rahns) were once flat, artless labels (“President Holds Press Conference,” “Fire Destroys Home,” etc.) that were about as exciting as an airport arrival-and-departure board.

But in an era of shrinking viewer attention spans, chyrons seem almost to have come to life and achieved self-awareness. Now chyrons not only tell viewers what the news is, they tell them what to make of it.

They snark. They troll. They correct in real time. The mouthiest of them all typically start with the same word. As in . . .

• “Trump signs MLK Day proclamation after calling African countries ‘s***hole’ nations.” (MSNBC, January 2018).

• “Trump: ‘I don’t support WikiLeaks’ (He loved it in 2016.)” (CNN, April 2017).

• “Trump: ‘For the last 17 years Obamacare has wreaked havoc’ (Law signed in 2010)” (MSNBC, July 2017).

• “Trump: ‘We’ve done a great job in Puerto Rico’ (Most of island still without power)” (MSNBC, October 2017).

Chyrons began to evolve as real-time fact-checks during Trump’s 2016 campaign speeches — but more recently as a means to lift a rhetorical eyebrow over some questionable presidential statement or dramatic development. Trump himself reportedly pays close attention to the bottom-of-the-screen banners, watching them on a muted TV during meetings and reacting angrily when they trumpet another presidential scandal, outrage or faux pas.

Chyrons, in other words, have become potent agents of influence.

“If I were a politician I would never go on cable TV without first getting an agreement that there would be no writing on the screen,” says Greta Van Susteren, who has hosted programs on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC and now Voice of America. “I would tell the network: ‘You can ask me what you want, but no writing on the screen.’ ”

When cable channels began airing Trump’s raucous campaign rallies live and in full, anchors and reporters couldn’t — or wouldn’t — speak over Trump. The only thing between the candidate’s blunt pronouncements and viewers was the on-screen banner.

And so the chyron became a real-time vehicle for challenging Trump, a candidate and president who is often untethered to the facts. The chyrons do the heavy work of squaring the record while simultaneously adding some winks and eye rolls in the parentheses:

• “Trump: I never said Japan should have nukes (He did).” (CNN, June 2016).

• “Trump says he watched (nonexistent) video of Iran receiving cash” (MSNBC, August 2016).

• “Trump: Clinton is hiding (Speaking in minutes).” (MSNBC, August 2016).

• “Trump: “Voters don’t care about seeing tax returns,” accompanied by an underline reading, “Poll: 78% say Donald Trump should release his tax returns.” (CNN, September 2016).


MSNBC, August 2016. (MSNBC)

Yes, CNN and MSNBC did this, mostly. Fox News didn’t, though it has certainly served up some mighty troll-y chyrons for Hillary Clinton and Democrats. Example: “A tale of two candidates. . . Hillary in hiding while Trump’s out on the trail.” (October 2016).

Thus, the chyron solved a problem the networks created in the first place, said Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University.

“They gave [Trump] such a platform for so many rallies that they had to figure out a mechanism for pointing out that many of his repeated assertions weren’t based on fact,” she said. “He’s live on the air promulgating things that are provably not true. [The networks] decided here’s the way to deal with it.”

But chyrons have also been a boon to Trump, who has exploited the brevity and constancy of them to his own political advantage, Hall said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/lifestyle/style...

chyron
(n.) - television graphics that occupy the lower area of a TV screen, originally coined by the Chyron Corporation which develops and manufactures on-screen graphics; now a commonly-used term for such graphics on TV broadcasts worldwide
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chyron