Its probably a combination of "this shouldnt look like regular tv" and "This needs to work reliably in really crappy situations". The font also looks like the

Its probably a combination of "this shouldnt look like regular tv" and "This needs to work reliably in really crappy situations". The font also looks like the subtitles that some local teletex stations used to use. I wonder how much of that broadcast is teletex/subtitle aligned to work well. If it had some smooth jazz with helvetica playing in the background I wouldn't take it seriously. That EAS font (to me a foreigner) screams "This isn't daytime television".