Etymology Genericization of the trademark Chyron, from Chiron (“centaur of Greek mythology”).
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Broadcasting, Media, TelevisionUS A set of graphics or words at the bottom of a television screen, sometimes unrelated to the current viewing content.
Chyrons (electronically enlarged words or numbers superimposed on the screen) might be used to illustrate and compare budget figures or to emphasize a quote.1982, Judy Woodruff, Kathleen Maxa, “This is Judy Woodruff at the White House”, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 63:
Chyron recognition: A celebrity who needs no electronically inserted title or caption (a chyron) to identify him or her on television, especially news programs or interview shows.1999, Rodger W[illiam] Claire, Entertainment 101: An Industry Primer, Beverly Hills, Calif.: Pomegranate Press, →ISBN:
4 more examples
The ABC broadcast also began to use Chyrons, which "generated brightly colored maps, charts, graphs, and illustrations and imposed text over pictures. A red slash, like the one on the cover of Time magazine, was superimposed on stories, in an effort to give ABC's newscast a distinctive identity."2004, James T. Hamilton, All the News That's Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 170:
In the days before desktop video production software, such as Final Cut Pro and After Effects, making even a simple black and white title was a tough business. Creating broadcast-quality video titles required a specialized piece of expensive equipment called a Chyron generator and a highly skilled Chyron operator to run it. In fact, there was a time when Chyron operators made a good living because they were the only ones who knew how to make good, professional quality titles.2006, Ian David Aronson, DV Filmmaking: From Start to Finish, Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 168:
The TV images that would shake American politics like none had since Watts in 1965 began innocuously enough: on NBC, above a chyron reading taped, it looked like a busy New York rush hour, though some are holding handkerchiefs to their faces. […] [T]he hemmed-in cops threw tear-gas canisters across the street at the apex of the marchers' U-turn […] grant park, chicago, illinois, the chyron now reads, and a woman's voice says, "The kids are still marching, it looks like a whole gathering of people with terrible colds"; […]2008 May, Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, New York, N.Y.: Scribner, →ISBN, page 321:
Chyron. Words shown on a video screen. Also known as a super. A slash (/) indicates a line break in a Chyron message in a script.2015, Charles Marsh, David W. Guth, Bonnie Poovey Short, “Broadcast/Podcast Writing”, in Strategic Writing: Multimedia Writing for Public Relations, Advertising, and More, 3rd edition, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 13: