STRATFORD, Conn.—CueScript says it will be at the 2026 NAB Show with three new teleprompting innovations that “elevate flexibility, reliability, and control for broadcast, corporate and live production applications.”

CuePad
Cuescript’s CuePad app has been updated to add flexibility and portable teleprompting to iPads and iPhones, delivering the performance and reliability broadcasters expect from CueScript’s professional prompting systems. Powered by CueTALK connectivity, CuePad incorporates the same rendering technology used in CueScript V2 monitors, delivering flawless, jitter-free and frame-accurate scrolling for professional prompting environments.

Designed for portability and fast deployment, CuePad integrates easily into modern production workflows, perfect for on location, or live events. The app supports both iPad and iPhone, enabling flexible mobile prompting for productions on the go supporting compact setups on jibs, Steadicam rigs, and handheld cameras. Built-in horizontal mirror and vertical flip modes ensure correct script orientation for any teleprompter glass configuration.

With quick and easy setup and seamless integration with existing CueiT software, CuePad ensures a smooth transition and minimal disruption to any workflow for a simple, professional-grade prompting solution, the company said.

CueiT NextGen Software Release
The next generation CueiT software has been updated with a next-gen text editor built for precision, speed, and control. Designed specifically for production workflows, this latest version introduces a seamless and predictable editing environment featuring advanced cloaking, intuitive marker management, and fully integrated runorder tools—giving producers and talent complete confidence when working with complex scripts, Cuescript said.

A robust, fully reliable undo/redo system ensures every change is tracked and reversible enabling users to make quick last-second edits or manage large-scale script revisions, bringing a new level of confidence and flexibility to live production environments.

Above-Hood Talent Monitor Mount
CueScript’s Above-Hood Talent Monitor Mount provides a simple and secure way to add a second talent monitor directly above the prompter hood. Designed for seamless integration into an existing CueScript setup, it enhances visibility for additional on-set talent without impacting camera alignment or workflow.

Compatible with CueScript 22- and 24-inch talent monitors, this solution is ideal for multi-presenter environments, interviews, and broadcast applications where flexibility and clarity are key, according to the company.

"At CueScript, our goal is to empower talent, engineers and production teams with tools that are intuitive, reliable, and adaptable," said Michael Accardi, president at CueScript. "These three new solutions demonstrate our commitment to modern broadcast workflows, whether it’s mobile prompting, advanced script management, or enhanced visibility for on-air talent. We are delighted to introduce them at NAB."

Cuescript will be in Booth C4720 during the 2026 NAB Show, which takes place in Las Vegas, April 18-22.

LAS VEGAS—CueScript has announced that it will be showing a custom teleprompter solution designed specifically for the Sony Electronics’ FR7 PTZ Camera at NAB 2023 (Booth C4421).

Available in four different models, CueScript’s custom FR7 PTZ prompting solution consists of the monitor, hood and mounting software. Models include the CSV2P19FR7 (19-inch CSMV2 On-Camera Prompter System), CSV2P17FR7 (17-inch CSMV2 On-Camera Prompter System) as well as the EMCP17FR7 (17-inch EMC On-Camera Prompter System) and the EMCP15FR7 (15-inch EMC On-Camera Prompter System). 

“The FR7 is unique from other PTZ cameras in that it features a full-frame cinema sensor and interchangeable lenses,” says Michael Accardi, president, CueScript. “Our existing PTZ prompting solutions would not have worked for this camera since the form factor of this PTZ is so unique. We designed a custom prompting solution that ensures that the camera is in the ideal position for capture, gives customers access to the interchangeable lens and also provides a reliable, high-quality teleprompter.”

CueScripts’ monitors range from the higher-end CSV2 monitor line, which is ideal for broadcasting applications and larger studios. With the same CueScript principles of style, quality and ease of setup, the EMC line offers a simplified middle market monitor that is commonly used at smaller stations and in vertical markets such as education. Both monitor lines come in various sizes to fit a range of use cases.

“We designed a range of prompt solutions for the FR7 to provide options for our customers, in terms of the monitor itself as well as the size of monitor that is preferred,” adds Accardi. “Regardless of the application, presenters will notice a difference with CueScript’s prompters due to the high-resolution LED screens, high contrast ratio and super smooth scrolling from CueScript’s CueiT software.”

SEATTLE—Dating back to the 1960s, teleprompters have been must-have equipment for newscasts as well as politicians, even as the early models were Rube Goldberg-ish contraptions that scrolled typewritten scrolls just off the camera lens. Later, scripts rode a conveyor belt in front of chintzy black and white cameras, with the script displayed on CRT monitors that appeared in front of the camera lens through use of half-silvered mirrors. Computer-rendered text later replaced the scrolling paper scripts, and that’s where things have been for 40 or so years.

That’s not to say that nothing’s changed in prompting. There are a number of technology changes currently going on, with more just around the corner.

TIGHT SPACES

Michael Accardi, president of CueScript, said he’s seeing a number of news studios needing to work in tight spaces. That’s creating a lot of interest in his company’s PTZ prompter. “What we thought would be a small usage prompter has become outstanding for us.”

The trick to the PTZ prompter is getting the camera inside the hood, which allows proper positioning of the lens. “Being able to pan 90 degrees with a PTZ, being small enough to get it close to a wall in a newsroom, or for use in an office space; they get into places where people normally couldn’t get a prompter,” he said.

Accardi said studios are also considering IP-based prompters as part of an overall migration to an IP infrastructure. “We started doing IP from day-one, when we introduced our software in 2014,” he said. “Our approach has always been that you can go IP end to end, at all cost, if you so wish. But we don’t force it on you.”

CueScript’s prompter monitors, video boxes and controllers have IP network jacks on them, but the monitors and video boxes have SDI and composite inputs, and the controllers also provide USB and CAN bus (Controller Area Network) ports. “You get to pick and choose what you want,” Accardi said. “We don’t dictate to you.” But when the customer wants to go to IP, it’s there waiting to be implemented.

GETTING RID OF THE BOX

Robin Brown, prompting product manager for Autoscript and Autocue, said he’s also finding customer interest in IP prompting. In response the company launched their IP range in 2017, which gives customers the option to go between an IP and standard baseband video workflow.

“We understand that customers are still apprehensive or nervous about doing a complete switchover [to IP], so we provide a solution that has both different variances,” he said. “But the rate of uptake to an IP workflow does seem to be growing quite rapidly.”

Brown pointed to one of the big advantages to an IP prompting infrastructure: “The basic element is that it reduces the amount of hardware that you require,” he said. “Traditionally you would have a box that produces composite video or HDI video, which is connected to your PC via a USB cable or serial cable, or however it’s connected.”

IP can eliminate that box. “We’re not sending video over IP, decompressing video and then recompressing it,” Brown said. “We’re just sending data, and the rendering is done by the PC that is inside the monitor itself. It means that we’re sending tiny bits of data. Even if you have a relatively slow internet speed, you can send data. It also means that those on-camera prompter screens can be anywhere.”

BRIDGING STANDARDS

Mike Burdick, sales manager at Mirror Image in Oshkosh, Wis., said that as prompter users have been updating the PCs that drive their prompting systems, they’re finding those PCs don’t have analog VGA ports, but digital HDMI ports instead. It’s part of an overall studio infrastructure trend.

“As the majority of cameras and studios are being upgraded and updated, or built from scratch, they are going to more of the digital formats that are sweeping through the industry right now,” Burdick said. “At the larger studios, SDI is common with the cameras, so it’s easy to kind of loop everything together through camera and feed the teleprompter.”

As customers upgrade their prompting monitors, they aren’t always ready to move to digital, according to Burdick. “Everything from our lower entry-level equipment, up to the full-sized studio equipment that utilize a monitor from 12-inch to 19-inch size has both HDMI and SDI as well as the more traditional VGA and composite inputs,” he said. “We’ve just had a handful of our customers in the past month here that have upgraded just the monitor on their older teleprompters so they could retrofit into the new studio.” When they do upgrade their prompting PCs, it’s just a matter of changing out the cabling.

SMART[PHONE] PROMPTING

Josh Apter, founder and CEO of Padcaster in New York, said that while his company’s DSLR-compatible smartphone-based prompter is convenient for professional production use, his company originally discovered a large market for a sub-$100 Parrot Prompter in schools.

“There were so many schools doing student broadcasts, morning announcements and things, and they were using a piece of paper that had them looking off to the side, or looking down at something,” he said. “That obviously works, but when you give them something like our prompter that’s so easy to use, it changes the entire thing.”

Instead of something bulky and hard to configure, the Parrot Prompter is a bundled kit which easily screws onto the lens threading, allowing the user to attach a smartphone to the assembly.

The Parrot Teleprompter includes Bluetooth remote and comes with 12 different-sized mounting rings comprising the most common lens diameters, 37mm–82mm, as well as a cleaning kit.

In the works is a Parrot prompter that doesn’t require lens threads for mounting.

Autoscript Epic
SEATTLE—There have been so many technology changes that stations and studios and field production crews have had to implement over the past decade, that the comparatively simple teleprompter may seem like it’s doing OK. The talent reads them day after day, after all.

But according to JT Meidl, president of Mirror Image in Oshkosh, Wis., there are obvious signs when stations should replace prompters. “If you’ve still got the big, heavy CRT hanging off the front of the camera, then it’s time to change,” he said. CRTs wear out and it’s hard to find any replacements, other than on the used market where they’re probably already close to worn out.

A new style of prompter that Mirror Image has developed is its Pan/Tilt Series LCD prompter, designed for Sony or Panasonic PTZ self-contained robotic cameras. “The camera fits inside the teleprompter hood assembly, and it’s able to pan side to side and up and down, within certain limits of course,” he said. They’ve also been working with Ross on prompters for that company’s line of full-size robotic pan and tilt robotic cameras.

FADING FLAT SCREENS

According to Michael Accardi, president of Cuescript in Fairfield, Conn., not only do CRT prompters need to be replaced, but many of the older flat screen prompters aren’t delivering what they once were. “They actually do wear out,” he said. “And you don’t realize it because it’s gradual, but most of the teleprompters out there are probably 50 percent as bright as they used to be, and it makes it much harder for the talent to read.”

He noted it’s not just the prompter screens that need replacement, but “the old style mounting equipment that’s out there, it doesn’t do justice to what people need to do a prompter job today.” This is especially true when mounted on a robotic pan and tilt head, where users don’t want a lot of play in the prompter assembly fighting the very precise robotic movements.

“TV stations like that because it looks better, they can move faster,” Accardi said. “They’ve had robotics that can do a certain move, but they had to go slower because the prompter was not able to keep up. It’s [also] much better for their servos.”

Accardi said his customers aren’t afraid to spend for his highest end prompters. “People want to buy once, they want somebody to stand behind it, they don’t want any of the aggravations,” he said. A variety of inputs is also a must. “We’re composite and VGA, but we also have the HD-SDI capability, so they can input any signal they want.”

UPGRADE PATH

CueScript’s CSM Monitor with 19-inch Talent Monitor
Ray Blumenthal, vice president of Broadcast Sales for Tiffen, parent company of the Listec teleprompter brand, said his company designed its prompters to be gradually upgraded. “I’m a big believer in either retrofit or future-proofed, so when something new happens, you could upgrade it,” he said.

Blumenthal agrees with Accardi on the need to replace fading displays. “Even flat displays, the very early ones, are coming to the end of their lives,” he said. “The new ones today have displays that are so much brighter—that’s the major upgrade people are making to their prompters today.”

One example of Listec’s upgrade path is on video inputs. “If you buy a teleprompter from us today, and you’re just using composite video—which 95 percent of the people are doing at the moment—that’s fine,” Blumenthal said. “And then down the road they decide they want to turn the whole studio digital, we can update it to digital, and you don’t have to buy a whole new display. It’s a board, some connectors, and we can install it or they can install it if they’re qualified.”

Listec’s next level is its Ethernet prompter. “The advantage there is that one cable carries video and power, so you no longer have to run a separate power cable to the prompter,” he said. That was not an issue with full-sized studio cameras, “but a lot of people are using smaller ENG type cameras in their studios, and unless they buy the big buildups, they have to run a separate AC supply to the prompter,” Blumenthal said.

LIGHTEN UP

Robin Brown, Vitec’s product manager for its Autocue and Autoscript prompters, says prompters are being replaced because adjusting their size and weight is part of the trend to reduce the mass of the camera package and support. “The cameras are just getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “You no longer need the enormous heavy tripod, you don’t need the same lenses as before, you don’t need the same heavy support. And at the same time, you don’t need a massive prompter on the front.”

But he cautions about reducing the physical dimensions of the display and mirror. “The talent still have the same quality of vision, so you might get a smaller camera, and you might get a smaller head—because it has a lower payload—but you have to factor in that the talent themselves still have the same quality of vision,” Brown said. “If they want a 19-inch prompter, they’re going to get a 19-inch prompter regardless if they’ve got a DSLR camera on the back or a full sized camera.”

Autoscript lightens the load with its one-piece Epic, a prompter monitor and talent monitor in one unit. “It has a single power source and the combined weight of [Epic] is less than they would have if they currently had a large talent monitor, which was mounted separately,” Brown said. This allows the studio to reduce the head and pedestal size, which further lightens overall weight.

For those using DSLRs, Autocue has introduced a DSLR-mount prompter. “Here in the U.K., we have broadcasters that are actually using the Flashcam setup, but they’re using the DSLR cameras, they’re not even using ENG cameras,” said Brown. “It mounts on 15 mils rails, so you don’t need to use any expensive or heavy system.”