Crawl

Found on 24-Hour News Networks, such as CNN, this line of scrolling text provides viewers with the headlines while they are watching a report on, say, tax evasion. Also called a news ticker. Any spoof of a news report is almost guaranteed to have a silly headlines populating this bar for the entire time for bonus jokes, which often requires one to rewatch the scene twice to catch everything. Said headlines may or may not be about a Noodle Incident.

While these seem fairly ubiquitous now, the idea of a 24-hour news crawl on the screen didn't become popular with many television news networks until after September 11, 2001. Prior to this, a few networks did run constant crawls, but mostly with stock information, sports scores, or weather updates.

Not to be confused with Dungeon Crawl or Dungeon Crawling.

Film
"WATCH "ARE YOU SMARTER THAN A CELEBRITY?" - WEDNESDAYS ON FOX. THAT'S RIGHT, WE EVEN ADVERTISE SHOWS DURING MOVIES NOW."
 * Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs features this in every news report scene, the best being when the food raining is first announced, and a standard crawl of weather in various cities changes to "Whaaaat the heck is that cheeseburgers raining right now?! Sorry, back to the ticker."
 * An earlier crawl includes "Stay tuned for 'Wet Pets': 2 hours of puppies caught in the rain" and "Tsunami warning in Wichita confuses many."
 * The Simpsons Movie:

Live Action TV

 * 30 Rock has featured a fake news crawl with headlines such as "Panda Murder-Suicide Shocks China"; "Wolf Blitzer Injured In Wolf Blitz"; "Mysterious Visitor From Future Wins Lottery Again"; "Anne Heche Leaves Husband For Pony."
 * The Australian comedy series CNNNN featured a fake news crawl during every episode. One episode even had a news crawl that summarised the original news crawl, and one had a news crawl for the vision impaired which basically filled the entire screen (in other words, you only saw three or four letters of the crawl at a time). You can view every one of these crawls here, y'know, if you're bored.
 * Used on Doctor Who and its spinoffs, whenever footage from BBC News or the fictional AMNN news channels appear.

Music

 * Chamillionaire's video for Hip Hop Police runs the names of rappers wanted by police on a fake news program's crawl.
 * The video for A Perfect Circle's creepy cover of "Imagine" has a fake news crawl.
 * The song "Bad Day" by REM has a video that spoofs news reports, complete with a crawl filled with spoof news items such as "Doctor Who was born in 1937, could be expected to live for many more years even if he was captured".
 * The lyric video of "Another Way to Die" by Disturbed does this with the lyrics crawling across the bottom of the screen.

Video Games

 * In a trailer of sorts for the The Lost and Damned downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, done in the style of a Weazel News report, talks about bikers causing violence while the crawl below reads things like 'Laid off worker gets laid', 'Stimulus package includes vibrator', and 'Bologna recall totally fucks worker's lunch plan' among others. And it's done again in a similar trailer for The Ballad of Gay Tony, with the main report focusing on illegal guns trade while the crawl has lines like 'Swine Flu scared by woman in mask' and 'Parents demand school closing - saying public education is socialism'. However, there is at least one that goes too far: 'Middle class to Congress: We don't want health care!'
 * SimCity 3000 has a news ticker which alternates between items giving genuine information about how you're doing and daft stories such as "Mayor denies kitty kibble shortage". And if you had disasters enabled, you'd better pay attention to the ticker, 'cuz if it says something about earth rumblings, crop circles, rowdy demonstrations or malfunctioning satellites, it's time to smash the doomsday siren button!
 * Ditto for SimCity 4, albeit vertically-scrolling and with less kitty kibble shortage.

Webcomics

 * In the Ozy and Millie series about Isolde becoming a reporter, the news story she's covering features in its crawl "A public service announcement followed me home the other day" (a reference to REM's song "Bad Day" and possibly the music video for the same; see above) and "Help me I'm shrinking."

Web Original
"...news that's fine to ignore --- World famous shaved yeti exposed to be just normal man. Ticket sales have been unaffected. --- There once was a man from Nantucket. If you see or have any information on this man please call your local authorities. His family misses him. --- A recent study suggests that an enlarged scrotum has little to no effect on... --- ...itchiness is increased by over 25% --- Mom, don't forget to feed Darth Tickles his pills. Last time he missed his pills he squirted milkshake all over the driveway. Gross --- Local news ticker writer is reportedly underpaid --- Childhood obesity is officially at an all time high. A candy parade will be held in celebration this weekend. --- Moms everywhere have been growing increasingly suspicious of their teenage sons' long bathroom visits. --- The President of the United States of America has agreed to solve abortion law issues through an immense royale rumble to the death. The first five hundred participants to sign up will receive a free hat and a refreshing fetus shaped popsicle. --- A poll conducted by your own Channelate studios revealed that non-news watchers are totally stupid jerks. --- The National Indoor Soccer Tournament has been cancelled due to lack of interest, throwing their fan into an uproar. --- Local authorities are confounded by donut without hole. A thirty-six hour round of questioning eventually lead the donut to confess to being a club sandwich. --- What the hell, is it snowing? Damnit I wore shorts today! Punch him extra hard for me."
 * JibJab's video "What We Call the News" uses a crawl as subtitles.
 * The Onion News Network, naturally, features joke headlines in its crawl.
 * In The Joker Blogs, there is an episode which is a news report with a crawl full of Mythology Gags.
 * The Cyanide & Happiness short, The Weatherman has one that is filled with jokes.


 * In this The Onion sketch, a crawl says among other things NASA is only 10 years away from faking landing on mars.

Western Animation

 * George & A.J., a short film by Pixar related to Up, has this during the news report, and it makes humorous references to the feature film, among other things.
 * In one episode of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, which parodied the War on Terror, Phil Ken Sebben installed a news crawl in the cafeteria.
 * The news crawl actually appears at the beginning of the obligatory court scene as well, where Mentok tries to predict what it's going to say next before finally just shutting it off.
 * On The Simpsons, one episode showed the Krusty the Clown appearing on Fox News, with an identical news ticker that lampooned Fox News' conservative bias (featuring headlines like "Do Democrats cause cancer?" and "Rupert Murdoch: Terrific Dancer"). Fox News was not amused.
 * The into to Karl's "Monkey News" segment on The Ricky Gervais Show features a monkey newscaster with a crawl reading "EEEP... SCREECH... OOOH..."

Real Life

 * Once when the comedian Lewis Black was being interviewed on CNN, he demanded they take the crawl off the screen so people could pay attention to the interview.
 * G4 does this, usually with things that'll later show up on The Feed.