Frankenbite

English

Etymology

franken- +‎ bite, where "bite" refers to a sound bite.

Noun

Frankenbite (plural Frankenbites)

1. An audio clip on reality TV that appears to be a single, contiguous interview line, but is in fact built from several disparate recorded audio clips edited together.
   • 2015, Peter B. Orlik, Media Criticism in a Digital Age, →ISBN:

     Editors work together with writers to splice together lines in what are known as "Frankenbites" to help create storylines with more comedic or dramatic impact.

   • 2018, Lucas Mann, Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV, →ISBN:

     The "they sign up for this" part of the quote seems to refer specifically to cast members, but Pozner uses the Frankenbite example to reinforce the fact that viewers are being lied to as well, manipulated into seeing a reality that was never really there and buying into whatever moral judgment is neatly manufactured by that contrivance.

Verb

Frankenbite (third-person singular simple present Frankenbites, present participle Frankenbiting, simple past and past participle Frankenbited)

1. To edit the audio footage of a reality TV show to combine several disparate audio clips into what appears to be a single line of dialogue.
   • 2010, Katherine Lapworth, Get On TV, →ISBN:

     People can be 'Frankenbited'; their words taken out of context and edited in a certain way.

   • 2012 September 19, Steve Pond, “'Survivor' Host Jeff Probst: Who Needs Emmys When You've Got 25 Seasons?”, in The Wrap:

     We don't Frankenbite things, meaning we don't take 10 words from 10 different sentences and put them together.

   • 2016, Annette Danto, Mobina Hashmi, Lonnie Isabel, Think/Point/Shoot: Media Ethics, Technology and Global Change, →ISBN:

     I don't know anyone who feels that it is wrong to Frankenbite if the essence of what is being said matches the essence of the story.