how can I remove the institute from the author footline on beamer?

Question

I'm using the Madrid theme. I have defined \institute as

\institute[]{\pgfuseimage{logo} \\ my-institute}

because I want the logo to appear at the title frame. Also, since all viewing the presentation are from the same institution, it makes no sense to declare the [] part of \institute. It seems redundant. But, in the footline, my name appears with an empty () to it's right.

My question is: how do I remove this ()? I don't want the institute specified at the footnote.

Just to be clear, my footline is something like:

my-name ()    |    title     |    date

I want it be

my-name   |    title     |    date

Answer 1

Madrid uses infolines as the outer theme, so you can set the footline template to not include the parentheses, but to keep all the other elements as they were:

\documentclass{beamer} 
\usetheme{Madrid}

\makeatletter
\setbeamertemplate{footline}
{
  \leavevmode%
  \hbox{%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,center]{author in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{author in head/foot}\insertshortauthor%~~\beamer@ifempty{\insertshortinstitute}{}{(\insertshortinstitute)}
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,center]{title in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{title in head/foot}\insertshorttitle
  \end{beamercolorbox}%
  \begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=.333333\paperwidth,ht=2.25ex,dp=1ex,right]{date in head/foot}%
    \usebeamerfont{date in head/foot}\insertshortdate{}\hspace*{2em}
    \insertframenumber{} / \inserttotalframenumber\hspace*{2ex} 
  \end{beamercolorbox}}%
  \vskip0pt%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}


\author{A.U. Thor}
\institute{The Institute}

\begin{frame}
Test
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Here's the bottom of the frame produced by my example code:

Answer 2

Absent a MWE, here's one way you might modify the footline by customizing the outertheme. See p. 165 of the Beamer manual and tweak as needed to suit your needs:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Madrid}
\useoutertheme[footline=authortitle]{miniframes}

\title{My awesome presentation}
\author{John Q. Public}
\date{17 November 2011}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{Outline of Lecture}
\begin{itemize}
    \item Background    
    \item Awesome results
\end{itemize}    
\end{frame}

\end{document}