TV News Terminology

The BBC has some strange in-house terminology to refer to various types of presentation device - some of them most of us are familiar with like "vamp" - but there are a a few BBC specific words that I've always wondered about. Can anyone in the know answer these?

1. When "The World Today" returned in 2001, the opening vamp was commonly referred to as a "twinkle". I've never heard this term used anywhere else before or since.

2. When BBC Four News launched, its opening vamp was called a "sprinkle".

3. Another one that has always baffled me is "piddle" sting. It seems to have been a device to break into scheduled programming, but it's an odd choice of term.

If anyone can explain why those terms have been chosen, I'd be very grateful. I'm familiar with some of the similar terminology used at ITN over the years but I have to say none of it has been as strange as those BBC terms above.

Can anyone think of any other strange broadcasting terms?

There are so many. Like in any workplace, people are bound to come up with terms that they can all understand for the purposes of expediting workflow.

Of course, what’s also interesting is that every shop does everything a little bit differently, and I think there are a lot of different terms compared to the US and UK.

One that springs to mind is the number of different terms used to describe the text graphic that appears at the bottom of the screen. Nowhere I’ve worked have people uniformly called them the same thing. In the UK, I believe the most common term is astons or titles. Over here, I can think of supers, chyrons, banners, CGs, dekos, camios, fonts, and lower thirds. It’s like Eskimos and snow — different names for the same thing.

Is the VO, SOT, PKG, NATVO etc. nomenclature used in the UK as well, or do you have different terms?

VO and SOT definitely.

Super seems popular in Australia compared to other terms.

Spot the SOT:

Many moons ago I used to refer to them as Aston’s but then picked up the term Strap

At BT Sport a break bumper that animates over live/ VT pictures is called a "splodge".

"Animate charisma", as I'm often told in the wine-bar of a Friday evening.........

Was that a person working from ITV posting this or was it as several people said a microwave feed from ITN to wherever it’s received (BT Tower). If that’s what happened I would assume it would be a highly directional and encrypted feed.

Or is just a plain satellite backhaul? Because it’s just News I doubt there’s a reason for it to be encrypted other than preventing people from viewing that feed. It’s not like a sporting event where rights are controlled.

Of course I imagine the primary method now is fiber and maybe a second diverse fiber path as well.

It was actually just a bulletin that had been uploaded to Vimeo with all that left in at the start.

Was it the on the official ITV News site? They previously (or may still) use Vimeo for uploading news videos.

What’s Big Ted and Sonic Sophie (or who they replaced her with) and how are the integrated? I know for the lower thirds you don’t use the VizRT software.

I think it was uploaded by one of the ITV regions as they used Vimeo to embed videos in posts on the ITV News site.