I've noticed on NHK news reports, occasionally a smaller version of the kanji "beginning" is written in the caption. About 1/2 to 3/4 size. It seems to usually follow a title or a name. Does anyone know what that is supposed to be?

I hardly watch any TV, but if it appears before a title it means ex- and is pronounced もと. In ordinary text it would be full sized but I guess on the news and in the newspaper it's sometimes made small, the same way western printing sometimes makes the suffixes on ordinal numbers small and superscript.