For the viewers watching with the sound off, the banner isn't supporting your story — it is your story. The Banner Builder writes on-screen headline text that's accurate, scannable, and built to survive the screenshot test.
Open Banner BuilderHere's a stat that should keep every producer honest: an enormous share of your audience watches with the sound off — in airports, in bars, at gyms, on phones in meetings they should be paying attention to. For those viewers, the banner isn't supporting your story. The banner is your story. Six to eight words at the bottom of the screen, and they might be the only journalism that viewer receives from your entire ninety seconds of work.
And there's a second audience for banners: the screenshot crowd. Every day, someone captures a banner that's compressed a fact too aggressively or dropped the qualifier that made it accurate — and the station's logo is right there in the corner, attached to the error forever. Banner writing is fast, low-status work in the rundown. It's also the work most likely to end up on the internet.
The Banner Builder takes your story — script, notes, or source copy — and writes the on-screen headline text that rides under your video. Paste what you have, pick your tone, and it generates a main banner headline plus three alternatives, all editable directly in the tool before you copy them.
What makes banner writing its own craft — and not just "a short headline" — is the brutal math of it. You get a handful of words. Every one has to survive three tests at once: it's accurate (no compression so aggressive it changes the facts), it's clear at a glance (a banner nobody can parse in two seconds is a banner nobody reads), and it's fair (the banner is the story's headline for the sound-off viewer, so it can't editorialize, overstate, or convict). "WATER CRISIS IN MILLBROOK CO." is more dramatic than "WATER MAIN BREAK: MILLBROOK CO." It's also wrong — an advisory isn't a crisis. The extra syllable of restraint is the difference between accurate and irresponsible.
The Builder writes on those rules and gives you options rather than one answer — because the banner for the first report reads different than the banner for the follow-up, and a developing story needs language that won't be wrong in an hour. Straight News tone produces clean, declarative headlines. Breaking News tone adds urgency appropriate to fast-moving stories without tipping into manufactured alarm. Two settings cover the full range of what most shows need.
It also handles the discipline that deadline pressure erodes: attribution inside the banner when the claim needs it ("POLICE:" does heavy lifting in five characters), the qualifier that keeps a developing fact honest, and the restraint to write what's confirmed rather than what's dramatic. A banner is a one-line contract with the viewer. The tool writes contracts your story can keep.
Who lives here? Producers building shows — every story in the rundown needs its banner, and on a heavy day that's forty small writing decisions nobody budgeted time for. Directors and graphics operators catching banners that arrive half-baked. And the overnight crew, where the person writing the banner is also the person writing everything else — at the hour when spelling errors are born.
The judgment that stays yours: whether the banner your market needs is the cautious one or the direct one, whether a name is confirmed enough to super, and the final read before it airs. The tool drafts the words. The screen is still your responsibility — because the screenshot will have your station's logo on it, not the software's.
County press release: MILLBROOK COUNTY — The Millbrook County Department of Public Works is responding to a significant water main rupture that occurred at approximately 4:40 a.m. Tuesday beneath Route 9, resulting in the closure of a three-mile stretch of the roadway between Ashford Road and the county line. Approximately 4,200 residential and commercial customers are experiencing service interruptions, and a boil-water advisory has been issued for affected areas as a precautionary measure. Repairs are expected to be completed by Thursday.
Logged interview — Marcus Webb, Public Works Director (break site, 11:20 a.m.): :14 — "This is a sixty-year-old cast iron main. When they fail, they don't fail small." :52 — "We've got to excavate, replace the section, pressure-test it, and then the water itself has to be tested before we can tell anybody it's safe. That's why this runs to Thursday." 1:37 — "My crews will be out here around the clock. Nobody's going home until this is fixed."
Logged interview — Denise Calloway, homeowner (her kitchen, 12:45 p.m.): :22 — "First I knew about it was no pressure in the shower. Then the alert on my phone." 1:05 — "I've got a pot going pretty much all day now. Boil it, let it cool, fill the jugs. Do it again. It's like camping, except I'm in my own kitchen." 1:48 — "My mother's ninety-one and she lives with us. So no — I'm not taking any chances."
Nat sound: excavator at break site • water in trench • kettle whistling • county alert on phone • traffic at detour. Reporter notes: detour adds ~15 min • two restaurants closed • Denise's mom detail feels like the heart of this.
MAIN BANNER BOIL-WATER ADVISORY FOR 4,200 MILLBROOK CO. HOMES ALTERNATIVE 1 ROUTE 9 CLOSED UNTIL THURSDAY AFTER WATER MAIN BREAK ALTERNATIVE 2 WATER MAIN BREAK: 3 MILES OF ROUTE 9 SHUT DOWN ALTERNATIVE 3 MILLBROOK CO.: BOIL WATER BEFORE DRINKING OR COOKING
Notice what none of these say: "crisis," "emergency," "chaos." The advisory is the news at its actual size — and every banner is still true if the story shifts an hour from now. That's the test.
How long can a banner actually be?
Shorter than you want and shorter than you think — the real limit isn't characters, it's glance time. A banner has to land in the two seconds a distracted eye gives it, which in practice means roughly six to ten words. The tool doesn't enforce a hard character limit; the AI is built to stay in that range naturally. But the discipline is the point: if the banner needs twelve words, the banner is trying to do the script's job. Cut it back and let the story carry the rest.
What's the difference between the Banner Builder and the Tease Writer? They're both short.
Opposite jobs, same brevity. A tease withholds — it creates a reason to stay by holding the payoff back. A banner delivers — it's the payoff compressed, the story's facts at a glance for someone who may never hear a word of it. Write a banner like a tease and you've made the sound-off viewer's screen useless; write a tease like a banner and you've spoiled your own story going into the break. Both tools live in the suite because the same story needs both sentences — doing opposite work.
Banners are where stations get roasted online. How does this tool help me not become a screenshot?
By being boring about accuracy in exactly the ways deadline-rushed humans aren't. The classic banner disasters are almost never malice — they're compression errors (a qualifier cut for space that changed the meaning) and the unforced errors of speed. The tool's drafts keep the attribution attached and the claims at confirmed-size, which removes that category almost entirely. What it can't protect you from is the final read — that's still on you, and it should be. But it gets you to the final read with better raw material than a blank box at 10:58.