So I'm sittin' here...
 

...watchin' some tv, while surfin', and it strikes me: "What kind of software does one use to make graphics for television?" I immediately realized that someone here must know. What kind of program do you use to make the graphics that, for example, precede top-20 countdowns on MTV, and that sort of stuff?

yeah, i'd like to know that too

From what I understand, it isn't a question of software at all. It's all about hardware. I think they run film through the editing machine, then lay on top of it the graphics which could be from any program capable of producing images.

Really??! How cool is that. I figured they just worked with some sort of digital system...

<a href="http://www.avid.com" target="_blank">Avid</a>

photoshop is more common than you'd think for pictures.

Avid is used a LOT for news package editing, and it has a titler that you can write text on.

Adobe After Effects is often used to make animated graphics like the ones you see on the evening news (the flying station logo, etc)

They also have dedicated graphics generators that they make the credits, the captions, the titles etc. that you see during a show. The graphic gens are hooked directly into the production switcher which lets them display the graphics by themselves or on top of video.

http://videosystems.com/ar/video_pla...nity/index.htm gives you an overview of Trinity, which is a fairly popular graphics gen in TV stations.