On Thanksgiving Day, 2009 the Philadelphia Front Page News (FPN) revised it's newspaper presenting a national news format available for readers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's called the news ticker. And within less than an hour of the new news ticker running at the FPN readers were excited to have an easy accessible news source that they can get without a click of the computer mouse. Now, anyone who wants to invest time in speed reading news, sort of, can go to the Philadelphia Front Page News, look to the left hand side news column and check out the latest news update. Being current on what's the latest news can now be like play when readers visit the FPN.
The following information, forwarded from the Wikipedia free encyclopedia, is a clear explanation of just what a news ticker is.
Though modern and efficient news tickers were not popularized in the United States until September 11, 2001, the first record of a news ticker as part of a regular broadcast is from NBC's Today show on its debut edition, January 14, 1952. Without the benefit of computer-generated headlines and graphics, the ticker was vastly different than the one we would know today. The Today ticker was an actual piece of paper with typewritten headlines superimposed on the lower third of the screen. The ticker was never very successful as a communications tool and was dropped not long thereafter.
By the 1980s, in northern parts of the United States, many local television stations used a ticker placed over morning local and network newscasts to pass along information on school closings due to weather. Sever weather watch and warning information was also commonly run on local station tickers. In both cases, the start of the ticker's cycle was often accompanied by an attention signal, such as warning tones or a small jingle from the station's news theme or network (such as the NBC Chimes).
