How to make your own TV news splash screens [I Heart TV]

For many years now, newscasters have been delivering the news to us with tiny video overlays hovering just over their shoulder. These innocent overlays are meant to attract you attention and make you interested in the story. They’ve served their purpose admirably over the years, and I’m sure that many men, wearied by the working day, have enjoyed the convenience of reading these captions while their wives talk endlessly about the crazy bitch at work who is plotting against her and ruining her life.

“Hey honey, can you shut up for a second! There’s a fucking stabbing on the TV. I fuckin’ LOVE stabbings!”

However, news stations are starting to recycle these images on their web pages, especially if the story they are reporting on doesn’t have any pictures. We finally get to see these works of art up close. In this article, we’re going dissect some of my favorite splash screens, and then rate them for artistic merit. I’ve also cooked up a couple examples of my own. Keep in mind that all of these images are from real new websites from across the US.

“We’ve replaced his generic crime scene with Folgers crystals. Let’s see if he notices.”

We’ll start with the most generic image, the Crime Scene. Almost every TV station creates one of these. This is the one-size-fits-all solution to a story with no interesting pictures or videos. If they drag the dead body of a midget S&M hooker out of the river with a harpoon stuck through her chest, this is usually the splash screen they use. This is the most common variety, with flashing blue lights, handcuffs, and the ever-present transparent crime scene tape. Occasionally, they’ll throw in an overlay of a jail cell, if the perpetrator was actually caught. If it’s a homicide, you can bet that they’ll throw in a chalk outline.

I’ll give it 3/5 stars for artistic merit, since it might have taken 15 minutes or more to create.

“Grab your weenies everyone! It’s time for a weenie roast!”

You don’t get to see this example often, but the sight of an Explosion splash screen definitely gets your attention. You know they’ll show a video of it, and EVERYONE likes explosions. You know the hunched-over old lady with the walker that lets her poodle shit in your front yard every morning? She gets wet over explosions too. As George Carlin said, explosions are fun!

Unfortunately, the Explosion graphic is never really…well, graphic.You don’t see limbs flying, or people running around on fire. You get a stock picture of an explosion with the words EXPLOSION overlaid. An intern could make this on his coffee break and still have time to eat a donut and jerk off in the bosses coffee pot. Therefore, this gets 1/5 stars.

“Oh no! Somebody call the WHAAAMBULANCE!!!”

Honestly, this doesn’t really get my attention at all. Who gives a shit about a traffic accident, unless there are bodies strewn all over the highway, or live pigs running around? Also, they should really think about hiring a skilled artist for this. I get the feeling that they overlaid an ambulance image just to give the picture a tiny bit of legitimacy. The render of the street and traffic cones is absolutely awful. I think this WAS rendered while the intern was jerking off and eating a donut. 1/5 stars.

“Is that half of a fucking spleen on the hood of that car. Jesus wept!”

Now, this is more fuckin’ like it. The first thing that sticks out is the word Deadly. I’m interested already. Then, the word Crash comes along to sweeten the deal even further. Maybe we’ll get to see helicopter shots of the accident scene, complete with cloth-covered bodies, skidmarks, and unidentifiable wreckage! I really have to complement the creator of this image. It’s cool enough that they spent a few minutes finding a couple of crumpled cars, but then they enhanced the entire image by overlaying blue and red police lights. This looks like a lot of fun, so I’ll give it 4/5 stars.

“Someone call the po po! I’m a blithering idiot!”

This is, by far, my favorite image. This went along with a story about a woman who had accidentally locked herself in her car—you can read the original article here. Somehow, she didn’t realize that she could unlock the car from the inside, so she naturally called 911 to ask for help. How do you make a splash image for such an incredibly stupid story? You break out the horror font, that’s how. TRAPPED BY TECHNOLOGY! OMGWTFBBQ!!!. Steven King should totally remake Christine with a soccer mom and a minivan with central locking. You know that the guy who made this image was laughing his ass off the entire time. This is truly a work of genius. 5/5 stars.

Now that you’ve seen what real TV stations produce, I’d like to show off a couple of my own creations. Let’s say that you needed to cover a story of a rather delicate subject matter, such as illicit gay sex acts. Unfortunately, there are still quite a few states with archaic laws on the books which forbid any sexual acts other than male+female man-on-top missionary sex. How would you create a splash image for such a story? With style and class, of course!

This image attempts to convey a lot of information with a very simple layout. First, you have a rainbow, which implies either happy, sunny days, or flaming homosexuality. Taking a cue from the usual Crime Scene images, I added a pair of Bedazzled handcuffs. Again, we’re implying that a crime took place, and giving the viewer an idea of what happened. Finally, we have the caption. I chose to offset the simple background image with bold letters and a bright white-red gradient. With a little bit of beveling, the text stands out from the background and grabs your attention.

As a test, let’s see if this image stands up to the Dan Rather test:

“Gay men felching each other. That’s part of our world tonight.”

So, that was an easy one. Now, I’m going to totally blow my wad on the next one. I’m going to try to incorporate almost every TV news cliche into a single image. If I’m successful, you should be able to understand the entire story with a single image:

I really pulled out all the stops on this one. We have the classic ambulance shot, a motion-blurred paramedics team, a police car with it’s lights going, the ever-present crime scene tape, and a 911 Emergency logo. Plus, there’s a glowing buttplug. The combined effect of this image is that you know that a person used a buttplug, tore their asshole, and called 911. The police and paramedics showed up, and the person was rushed to the hospital. The police suspected foul play, so they cordoned off the area as a crime scene. You don’t need to actually hear the story at all, unless you suspect that the story was about your Aunt Beatrice. Even then, you really don’t need to know that, do you? Especially if you’re eating dinner at the time…

So you know the story,but does the image work? Let’s ask newscaster Melissa Theuriau, because when I think of torn orifices, I think of her:

“Hot damn.”

There you go. I could totally watch her talk about torn assholes. Actually, I could totally watch her talk about anything. Anyway, go out and explore your local news website and see if you can find some winners. If you find anything cool or create an awesome splash screen of your own, drop us a line here.

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