9/11 was the debut of the scrolling news ticker on cable news networks

September 11, 2001 was the
day American news networks introduced the permanently scrolling
news ticker.
Mark Abadi/Business
Insider

• The September
  11, 2001 terrorist attacks ushered in many changes in
  American life.
• One of the lesser-known changes was that the attacks
  prompted news networks to introduce the scrolling news ticker
  at the bottom of the screen.
• The news ticker quickly became a staple of the
  news-watching experience, but also came to reflect a society
  that was always in crisis mode.

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The September 11 terrorist attacks had a profound impact on just
about every aspect of American life, from the rise in hate crimes
to the creation of the TSA. They even had a lasting impact on

the way Americans talk.

But one of the lesser-known changes ushered in that day took
place on TV screens, specifically, the displays of cable-news
networks covering the tragedy.

For cable news outlets, September 11 was the day they introduced
the scrolling news ticker at the bottom of their screens. Now a
ubiquitous part of the news-watching experience, the news ticker
was largely unused before the 2001 attacks. 

According to the
Observer, prior to September 11, news tickers had mostly been
used to alert viewers of emergency weather updates, sports
scores, and stock market quotes, and were used intermittently at
most. 

That all changed the day of the attacks, when news networks
suddenly found themselves scrambling to keep up with a disaster
that was rapidly and simultaneously unfolding in New York City,
Washington DC, and rural Pennsylvania. At 10:49 a.m., 21 minutes
after the collapse of the World Trade Center’s North Tower, Fox
News launched its scrolling news ticker at the bottom of its
screen featuring the latest facts and headlines. CNN followed
suit within 20 minutes, and MSNBC debuted its own news ticker at
2 p.m., according to the Observer.

For viewers, desperate for information and answers, the news
ticker was a welcome innovation. It served something of a
therapeutic function, too:

“Every news channel — and many non-news channels — broadcast
short clips of video footage in loops that were transfixing until
they became nauseating,” Kate Stoeffel of the Observer wrote in
2011. “In lieu of watching the sequence of events again — no more
believable for how many times it’d been viewed — the crawl was a
place to avert one’s eyes without interrupting the consumption of
news. It informed and it soothed.”

Americans remained glued to their TVs for weeks following the
attacks, and networks kept pace by keeping the ticker on their
screens. Unlike past emergencies, this time the news never
stopped scrolling. Networks continued to employ it in the days,
weeks, and months after the attacks, until viewers could hardly
remember a time before it existed.

“To remove the ticker, after all, would be to say life had gone
back to normal, to reject the national shibboleth that everything
had changed,” James Poniewozik
wrote for Time magazine in 2010. “Who wanted to be the first
to do that?”

As months turned into years, observers began to recognize the
news ticker as a reflection of a country that was perpetually on
edge, and of news outlets that were willing to capitalize on
viewers’ fears.

“After the shock wore off and the smoke cleared, the ticker
remained,” Poniewozik wrote. “It became not just a tool but a
symbol. It was a message in itself, a constant prod, an emblem of
a media era of constant crisis mode and steady overstimulation.”

The scrolling updates became an “anxious Greek chorus of constant
low-level chatter,” he wrote, adding that “now, the data stream
onscreen seemed to say, the emergency was permanent; the warning
lights were always flashing.”

Seventeen years later, the ticker is still going strong, although
networks have begun to curtail its use. Fox News nixed the news
ticker during its daytime programming, only bringing it back for
primetime coverage every night at 7 p.m. MSNBC
ditched the news ticker entirely in April, although CNN
continues to use it around the clock.

It’s just one of the many ways life in America was irreversibly
changed that day, and an example of how the effects of the
attacks are still playing out today.