I’m not sure if this post will be allowed, but I am a subject matter expert as a former professional TV and film editor (Gaylord/Westinghouse/CBS/MTV Networks 1989-2002) and have firsthand experience. In the old days, title cards were literally press-on white letters on a black card that would get photographed, then used by itself, or overlayed over other footage. Early on, it was done on film via a chemical process at a lab. Same for copies of stuff if you needed to reuse it for multiple episodes. Or the film masters were sent back and forth after each broadcast, disassembled, and they used the same credit reel or mechanical open again. But usually copies were made due to logistics. It was essentially a fancy and expensive machine that projected film onto unexposed film to make a copy.

When electronic (analog) television came along, tv cameras, electronic title generators (Chyron) and videotape replaced most of this. Electronic linear videotape editing allowed you to reuse multiple show elements without any physical splicing. If you’ve ever copied something between two VCRs, or made a cassette mix tape, it’s the same concept. Titles and other graphics could be generated on the fly and mixed into whatever footage you want in the editing suite. Lossy analog copying at first, then via lossless digital video gear and digital videotape, then later all on a computer workstation like Avid then later Final Cut or Adobe.

A lot of the old traditions are still used in current lingo. It’s still common to refer to one’s personal credit as “their card.“ As in, “I got the first card in the broadcast….” Same to referring to reels or cuts, even though there are rarely any reels of anything or any physical cutting.

Hope this helps. Happy to entertain any follow up questions.