Text on Text

Now at some point I can't quite recall I decided to abandon this particular waste of internet until the actual demise of teletext; after all there's only so much wistful writing you can do about the demise of teletext without it actually happening. And I was fairly confident no-one was too likely to usurp the market. And if they did good luck to them. Frankly reading back these pages disturbs me, and I can't help thinking I was a very odd, angry youngster direly in end of a hobby and/or an editor. Perhaps a slap round the head.

In any case, what can be gleaned from this frightening puesdo-diary is that I was always assosiated the demise of teletext with the demise of anolouge TV. So imagine the horror when, I think it was in earlyNovember, Teletext informed the nation it was to cease broadcasting in Janurary 2010. Well maybe the horror didn't quite have the impact they desired because they came back a couple of weeks later with the news Teletext shall cease on the 14th of December-AKA tomorrow!

Just to clear up any confusion caused by the arrogent franchaise naming, 'Teletext Ltd' which provides services the ITV, Channel Four and Five is what is closing down. Ceefax, a more asture, less colourful and much slimmed down beast than in its glory days, shall linger on. Teletext explain the demise of their service in terms sacerly more complicated than mine-it didn't make any money any more. They wanted more spectrum room (whatever that means; for all my admiration of teletext the technical stuff somewhat escaped me. I know its transmitted on spare lines. Or something) for advertising and didn't get it. Of course Teletext is part of a wider media group which probably isn't doing all that well either, what with the recession, no-one reading papers anymore (I do and know lots of people who do but the TV and indeed the papers keep telling me no-one does, which seems self-defeating on the latters part) and thus a lack of in advertising, the least profitable and most despensible part of that media group. Now to me the prospect sacraficing teletext in order to keep the owners of the Daily Mail exceedingly wealthy seems, shall we say, a slightly unsettling conception of priorities. Or more figuraitivly, akin to barbacuing golden-furred kittens to feed to a slightly peckish Nick Griffin.

Business, I can only presume is however, business. And you can understand companies no longer really desiring to advertise their product in blocky kitch eighties graphics. For whatever reason Teletext never became the fashionable counter-culture phenomenon it could have. Where are the Bamber Boozler T-shirts? Or special DVD's? And why do not I see 'All hail Cedric the dragon!' scrawled upon the walls of my university? And where the public-art demonstrations of those slightly overly self-aware zany mega-ziners? To be positive, Teletext maintained a true cult following, rather than one of those things which everyone knows about and sort of likes but is always referred to as a cult phenomneon. Like, lets say, The Flaming Lips.

I should also point it is not the case, as I first presumed, that the unlovably ugly digital Teletext will remain whilst fraily charming anolouge shall be turned off. No, its the whole thing, gone on a date defined as '14/15' of December. It is generally referred to as 'news and editoral content' closing but as far as I can understand, this contains anything that could possibly be written upon teletext. Or anything else. All that will remain will be Teletext Holidays, which now has its own Sky Digital channel anyway.

So no more planet sound, by far the best music magazine online or in, er, magazine, despite having to deal with a constantly reduced number of pages. No more Gamecentral (although actually that is supposed to be carrying on online somewhere), a feature I read regularly despite having almost no interest in the content. No more Bamboozle, unquestionably the hardest quiz on television. Show me someone who achieved the top strangly punning catogory of correct anwser and I'll show you a dammable liar. No more teletexts, in which various crackpots and the odd sensible person give their opinions on everything and anything. Similarly, no more Vortex, the mysteriously named forum on film and its TV equivlent which was amazingly critical of almost everything.

As you can tell, I find the 'write in' bits of Teletext the most appealing. Teletext appeals to such a strangely diverse demographic that can not be replicated. Everyone (well a lot of people: for most of the time I was writing this blog, whisper it softly, I didn't have regular access to teletext) can use Teletext, so it is restricted only to those who choose to. And have the time. Dear Ceefax, the BBC letter's page could be made into a sersis called Britain's Angrist Pensioners. I've written in once or twice, not to Ceefax but the Void, Planet Sound's music forum, but more to see my material printed on teletext than any desire to discuss musical matters with the likes of DJ Gordy or Tyler Durden (no offence to them, they were just the two regular names which came to mind, which is much more a compliment).

The media's famously navel-gazing when it comes to pondering its own signifigance and I do wonder how the passing of Teletext will be treated. Its not really the end of an era though, its the end of Teletext, which is much, much worse.

Page(s) of the (final) day- p105-109-Teletext farewell features
Delightful collection of pieces about teletext, including a Digistiser retrospective and a special Bamber Boozler quiz on Teletext itself! Hopefully I'll be able to write a quick overview of all the final day content, but I encourage all to go and have one last look themselves. Much of the content is published in the internet now if (like me) your TV reception is tempremental, although it really isn't the same. Happy teletexting!

Managed to find the teletext advent calender this year, but neglected to mention it here until to Christmas Eve, apologies. It's page 696 on channel four-I think- for anyone who wants a quick last look. Not too much other festive teletext news, other than to say poor weather has moved my aerial and made it difficult to actually read the thing. The curious advertisement for "a letter from Santa" that I've only ever seen on teletext has reappeared this year, which pleases me. Along with big, colourful, blocky Santa of course.

Slightly creepy fat men aside, there has been a few other noteworthy, if not seasonal, happenings in the expansive yet inexpensive world of teletext since my last post. One that popped up through my Google alerts system informs me of RTE's Artel winning a technology award!Sort of. RTE actually won the award for its mobile WAP services which reproduce teletext on your mobile. This can also be done through a link on the ceefax.tv site, which also offers Ceefax funny enough. While it may be more deserving of the award, however, RTE's offering is on safer legal ground so was always the more likely recipient of the no doubt prestigious Irish Internet Association Net Visionary 2007 Award for Mobile Internet. Well if prestigious means long it certainly is. It has 300'000 impressions a month, which doesn't sound too impressive. Its far less than actual Artel or Ceefax usage and when you consider how many impressions one user is likely to make a month (probably quite a few as its a useful service used right) you have to wonder how many users there are. But Ireland is a small country and not too many people are au fait with their mobiles to the degree they can access teletext via the bleepy device.

It is interesting RTE have simply decided to use their teletext service for their WAP services. For all the fuss made of WAP when it first came out, it has far, far more in common with teletext than the internet. It has improved over the last few years, but its largely been usurped by (at least near) actual internet on mobiles. I remember the first time I used WAP services on a phone around 2002, it was like a very slow proto-type teletext. Colourless with very little information and a fidgety control system, entirely devoid of graphics.

If you can drag yourself away from the presumably annul IIANVAMIes (eye-ian-famies), there was another surprising new fangled addition to the bloated Teletext franchise this month. Teletext Extra is Teletext Ltd's EPG( Electronic Programme Guide). That may have been a sentence with lot of capitals but its not actually all that interesting a story. An EPG is essentially an onscreen TV book, telling you whats on when, what its about, when its on again and probably allowing you to set reminders. If you have SKY or Virgin TV or something, you'll be familiar with the one they gave you most likely. In fact I'm not sure how or what you would install Teletext's offering. But anyway, why does it deserve the hallowed moniker Teletext, you may ask. Well, alot of things do these days according to the owner of that particular upper-case word, but there is some logic behind it. Teletext EPG combines the traditional role of an EPG (as outlined above) with the traditional role of classic teletext, providing information on a range of subjects. I'm afraid this was quite a long paragraph on an innovation that probably doesn't deserve even that increasingly worthless moniker. Did we really have that much trouble switching between the EPG and teletext previously? Maybe we did and I've forgotten, must be it. Before we get too cynical and Orwellian , though, we should acknowledge it will be nice to see teletext survive in some form in the digital age.

A quick charitible note, you can find the Christmas Family Appeal on page 178. Probably over by now actually but if your feeling guilty about your Christmas spending there's all sorts of charitable organizations lurking around teletext. Anyway, a Merry Christmas to all appreciate the quaint majesty of teletext, oh and gosh darn it, even those who don't.

Oddly enough this was something I was wondering today, wouldn't be it awful on confusing if you had to get a plane the night the clocks went back? For non-UK readers, the slightly archaic practise of putting the clocks back an hour so farmers and other morning people can work in the light persists here. And it happened this Sunday. The actual change comes at 3AM in order to minimize disruption, though of course the aeroplanes are still flying. You can understand how confusing that would be, say, around half two. Have you missed your 2:15 flight or is it in 45 minutes at the 'next' 2:15? Anyway you'd assume there is some flawless procedure to prevent such confusion. Gatwick airport decided instead, however, to heighten it.

Apparently a "glitch" meant that the clocks weren't set back at all in Gatwick. This meant all flights were displayed as an hour late. And just inside Gatwick, Gatwick's information is send directly to Ceefax and Teletext for display as well as there own website. See there's the tenuous link to teletext. Considering most people still use it to check on aeronautical comings and goings it no doubt did cause serious disruption, or at least muddled confusion.

Technological types are speculating that the computer's clock was simply set to the wrong country, therefore didn't know about daylight saving time. Seems too simple but I suppose you should never overestimate the competence of management or underestimate the laziness of workers.

Or analogue switch off. Whatever you call it, for this blog's purposes, it's the traditional style teletext switch off. And it begins tomorrow morning in Whitehaven. Well, it only sort of does. BBC2 is the only channel going off the terrestrial air tomorrow, the rest being removed later in the month. Now as far as I'm aware, there is no difference between the BBC2 Ceefax service and the BBC1 version, certainly it's minimal if there is. I think there used to be a few extra pages on BBC1 but think it's pretty much the same now. So in truth, no teletext is being removed tomorrow morning. By the 14th of next month, certainly all forms of traditional teletext and, arguably more significantly, the channels that carry them will be off the air. By 2012 the whole of the UK will be switched over. Will be interesting to see how long channels bother to maintain a traditional teletext service. As London is one of the last areas to switch over they should be reasonably well maintained, housing a fifth of the country's population should be enough to keep planet sound updated regularly anyway.

Apparently the main feature of Whitehaven which makes it such a good test switchover candidate is that it currently has terrible analogue reception. As you know, bad reception=no teletext, or at least very hard to read and navigate teletext. So perhaps Whitehaven, now no doubt to be immortalised in pub quizzes, is a bit of a false dawn for the Death of Teletext. That's right capitals. Even if it is, however, the major switchover's begin in the later part of next year. The large "Border" region is the first to go with a few others following in 2009. So I suppose a false dawn only indicates the real one.

Yesterday marked the 33rd birthday of Ceefax, and therefore, the 33rd birthday of Teletext itself, Ceefax being the proto-teletext service. So let everyone celebrate. A canandian news release informed me of that funny enough.

Last time I posted a promised an immenient report on Ceefax's rejigged entertainment index. I then didn't post anything for a month, the reason being this was the most utterly banal update your likley to see. Quizes have been merged and theres fewer interviews and features but there is still generally one review for an album/ game/ film. And it's called Entertainment Extra, what it is 'extra' to is left to the readers imganination.

Piece of entertainment page purging from the other channels, quite old news really but just realised I never mentioned it here. Channel Four teletext have removed of their sub-page heavy 'tours and gigs' section along with cinema listings. Admittly trawling through sixty odd sub pages to check if and when your favorite band was playing was far from time efficenent. However, on those long sleepless nights it is suitably hypnotic. The local night out/music pages are, as of a few weeks ago, still there. They are actully quite useful, as it gives the dates and times of smaller places gigs and preformances, listed by city. Although also slow, you'd struggle to find a more concise database of local entertainement all in one place. Most of these should be moved to digital text, but despite promises I've yet to see the tours pages on channel four's digital teletext service.

On "teletext cultural reference watch" (it could be thing, though isn't) the credits for The Most Annoying TV We Love To Hate (sounds shit and it wasn't great) were displayed in a ceefax format. Only partly makes up for their glaring obmission from the programme proper. What is more derided, has a bigger cult/waster following? There probably are examples teletext remains top twenty at least! Even the title allows for it's inclusion, top TV not TV programmes. Perhaps the next pointless list show...

Ceefax entertainment section is undergoing another change tonight. A section called Entertainment extra is due to "replace" the Gamestation, Music, Film, Daily Quiz,charts and Have Your Say pages. How precisly this vaugly named section will replace these very different pages is questionable. If they were simply to be incoperated into this section, presumably moved would be better wording. My bet would be on ten pages that have on various days a review or two of each kind, probably not Games as I can't imagine it gets a high readership. Quiz and charts will probably remain as they are easy enough to maintain. Couple of interviews will probably be thrown in to but on the whole it'll most likely to be a bit of a downgrading. We won't have to wait too long before it is clear though as the changes come into effect tomorrow. I considered delaying my post til then but you gotta create some suspense.

Got an interesting teletext article through my google alerts yesterday about Teletext in Nigeria. Admittedly it had the tone of an advertisement more than a genuine article but was keen to impress how this apparently recent introduction has been a success. The ability to access news at any point has been particularly appreciated. It has been used for education and while the article doesn't go into specifics this is surely a good thing and a very innovative idea. Run by Tgmedia, teletext apparently has attracted lots of interest amongst the Nigerian public and it is expected to be quickly expanded. even into a blackberry service. Parts of it are aimed towards the sizable illiterate population of Nigeria, again I don't know specifics of how that works but it is a clever idea at least.

So another update on Ceefax tomorrow and perhaps even what is surely the key issue of our age, Nigerian Teletext.

I remember a statistic a few years ago that said sport pages were actually more popular than news pages on teletext. This doesn't really surprise me. Most teletext services devote about 100 pages to sport. Consider that in comparison to TV, were sport will get five minutes at the end of the news, alot of which is eaten up by an egomaniac "bantering" at the camera and anchorpersons. Even newspapers, good ones anyway, give comparatively little credence to sport as a subject. When you consider news, however, the BBC actually uses the first three paragraphs of it's web reports for Ceefax. Which can lead to some incomplete stories, although to be fair, that seems to be less of a problem than it used to be. Anyway the point is, teletext can't really be said to offer a more complete news service than the TV or papers. Though I would argue at certain points when one story (celebrity death, election etc) monopolises the aforementioned mediums, teletext comes into it's own as it can deal with these subjects and many more.

Largely though, unless I was pressed for time, teletext wouldn't be my main news source. Artel is a prime example of why this should be. I know they are an Irish service but their coverage of Gordon Brown taking power was extremely basic. "Brown to take over UK labour post," actually been known for several weeks now, some would say years. Actually, it's a bit of a nothing story but it highlights how little detail you are likely to get in just 60-odd words. Much of the time reading the headlines is just as informative as heading the article. As I said, very convenient if your in a rush but I would still wouldn't recommend it as primary news source.

Sport on the other hand, doesn't really need massive depth. It can be well covered in 100-odd pages. It can also cover the more unglamorous sports that generally get overlooked on the news except on the big occasions, eg tennis and Wimbledon, golf and Ryder Cup. It's also probably the section that comes closest to being the "electronic magazine" teletext was often branded as. Someone with a general interest in sport could probably happily waste an hour or so flicking through the entire section. Whilst it does offer quite alot of news, alot of sport, especially football, is rumour and conjecture. For what are undoubtedly serious socio-physcological reasons, that is much more interesting than bare fact. But largely opinion and news, even rumoured news, are kept separate.

Teletext (the company which provides ITV and chanel fours teletext services) has often been accused of right-wing bias in terms of news. I can't really say I've noticed this. It's fairly hard to insert bias in a 60 word article. I would perhaps concede that more right-wing issues are covered. It's not nearly as bad as the sensationalist tribe you get on ITV television news mind you. They probably do play to their audience a little though, which contains a high proportion of conservative pensioners. I wouldn't say they are the majority, not least because it scares me a little, but they seem to be ones who vote in the polls and phone in their opinions. They bring in the bacon so to speak, or mow in the moolah to be ether more or less tabloidy.I'm not sure.

Apart from aforementioned problems with the internet link, ceefax news is rather good for news, although not nearly as good as the BBC website which seems to have stored every article written since the millennium. On Ceefax I would recommend the Sci-Tech News on page 154. Alot of stories that should be on the front page of newspapers, but the potential cure for cancer isn't important because it doesn't involve a dead royal or a much hated Prime Minister. There is also about 20 different news stories on view at any one time which is useful in times of one-story televised news, an increasingly common occurrence. The In-Depth section also provides an answer to my own above criticism that you can't get much detail into tiny little teletext articles. "The Ceefax Files" they are called. Seems a little light-hearted when it's about the London bombings or a misssing toddler but a bit of humour is needed in the news sometimes. Not morning-news bantery humour mind, but something along these lines. Ceefax is sometimes accused of a left-wing bias, but that's because thanks to FOX news, those on the right-wing think everyone is out to get them. They aren't wrong, it's just everyone is lying about Iraq, Afghanistan, corruption and incompetence. Or at least they are reporting it when they shouldn't, that's a favorite of Bill O'Reily, which is both amusing to hear from a journalist and depressing that so many watch and believe him.

Veering back on topic, there is wholly separate entertainment news on Ceefax. It exists on the Teletext services too, but is generally split up into music, film and theatre news rather than being nicely clumped together. It covers a rather wide variety of stories in reality. It seems to make an effort to be different from your average celebrity gossip monger style. So we get alot of news on dead composers and opera singers. Well news of their deaths, typically afterwards there isn't much news about them. Celebrities in court is another favorite. George Micheal and Pete Doherty being the luckiest to grace to pages most often. This has attacted some critcism, as death and celebrity crime shouldn't be judged as entertaining news. But that is misconstruing the point and ,well, changing the title. Entertainment news doesn't mean news for your entertainment, it means the news of people in the entertainment industry. If it were the former, it would be a dismal failure as many of the stories are rather dry. In the role of the latter, however, it can be judged a success and does provide a service. It should really be judged as an extension of the news service, not the news part of the entertainment section. Of course the placing of it, at p501, at the start of the entertainment pages contradicts this.

So is teletext is a good news? Well, with a slightly unconventional analogy I would say it's a bit like a massive table that sits only two inches below the roof. You can put alot on the table, but not much of it. You might not eat your dinner of it but you can keep the crisps there. If your looking for another wide but shallow analogy, may I suggest Beth Ditto.

The RTE teletext service, Artel celebrates it's 20th anniversary today. Marketed as an "electronic newspaper" upon it's conception, that is largely what it is. It terms of style it's very similar to Ceefax. Frankly, I rarely use it because I don't get it on my TV but it is well packaged onto the internet by RTE. If I don't already have a link to it I will post one shortly. It does seem to be slightly more limited graphically in terms of how many colours and backgrounds. In that way it's quite similar to UK teletext ten years ago as it also has a greater depth of service than Teletext or Ceefax. Perhaps, and I do mean perhaps as this may not be accurate, this is because RTE doesn't have an equivalent digital service to maintain. In fact Artel is still carried on RTE's sky service, though it doesn't always work that well.

According to the article from which I found this out (I was going pretend I counted the days but...) Artel is used daily by one in five people. I'm not aware of the corresponding UK figures but that seems pretty high for only people who use it daily. Especially when you consider there is a good number of people who, despite it's total simplicity, are mightily confused by teletext of all kinds. Not even necessarily old people, in fact they use it more than most. If you've ever read the letters pages on teletext, pensions are quite the hot topic. Very few think they are too high.

Although probably a similar proportion of people have Sky or some similar service in the RoI as in the UK, you do get a sense Artel is a bit more widely used than Ceefax and certainly more valued. So congratulations to it on it's 20th birthday. There are currently no plans in the Republic for a terrestrial switch off so it may well outlast the 30 something Ceefax!