Text on Text

"Revamping" and "Reorganizing" the entertainment section seems to be de rigor on teletext recently. Closley following the changes at ITV and C4 Ceefax have out done the irriatatingly named Teletext company. As I explained before the words revamp and reorganize really should have another meaning added to the dictionairy which could be something like the removal of things that cost a bit too much. The pages in question are two of the more interesting. The DVD news/review page was very useful and informative to people like me who don't really live near anywere that sells DVD's. It was pretty well written too by somebody gallagher. Indeed he continues to write it on-line somewhere. If I find the adress I'll link it. His goodbye was a page long and probably a touch twee. He did mention "budget restrictions though" which is the closest to an admisson that there is no reorganizing or revamping going on(It would require something to replace it) that you'll likley to get from someone who still works for Ceefax. Indeed I don't really see how cutting the news/reviews page will do anything, fiscal or otherwise, as Somebody(Maybe David) Gallagher will still be employed to review films. Maybe they get to pay him less.

The other causlty of this mini-cull(Only a double murder really) is the games questions. Usually my fourth or fifth port of call when turning on Ceefax. It was annoyingly merged a few years so that it shares it's pages with games news so it often ended up seven or eight sub-pages long. The goodbye there was alot less sentimental than Somebody Gallagher's. Restricted to one sentence in fact. I nearly felt cheated. The news section is not being dropped, by the way. I often felt the news wa just random speculation taken of the internet and was often pretty dull to read. Then again not owning a gaming console since the SEGA Megadrive maybe it wasn't for me. I think thats why I liked the Games Questions section more. It was nearly constantly off-topic. Most letters asked the guy, David Gibbon, where they could get free spyware protection, what was wrong with their computer and why films won't play in their American PSP(not sure what that is, just that everyone's talking about. think it's a muntant I-Pod/Gameboy crossbread. Still it was excellent in it's way. The gaming reviews are being cut from two pages to one though is could be seen as a genuine revamp as the second page is being replaced with a Gaming Colum. What does that entail. God knows, or at least David Gibbon.

There is a liklhood that neither know actually. God has bigger fish to fry and David Gibbon is actually leaving Gamestation after a pretty-damm-long-in-the-field-of-journalism eight years. A big enough deal considering he seems to be the "stations" only writer/employee. It's very hard to sum up a game in 70 words and give the review humor and readability at the same time but he done it well. Some of the questions were pretty braindead,even to me and I write a blog about teletext, the internet of the past. And the only reason I don't have a website proper is because they look much too complicated. My point was the questions were always very politley and helpfully answered. It may come to the point where my first port of call for Games related, um, stuff will be the Channel four teletext equivlent of Ceefax's Gamestation. Which is of course entitled.........Gamestation. Origina;ity not as important as it once was ,eh? It comes with more detail but is really for hardcore gamers that I can't really count myself in as tomorrow I plan to sell around a quater of my collection. I also never buy new games and download a hell of alot free games of websites.

Ceefax.tv is playing up at the minute so I might not be able to get pictures of the gamestation goodbyes until tomorrow. I ahsten to use my phone to e-mail pictures again as last time they were lost in transit. But I might give t a go if Ceefax.Tv doesn't repair itself by tomorrow. Maybe the evil BBC have had their wicked way with it. Another rather unimportant thing that has happened in the life of me and blog is i've decided to increase my google alerts to include some other key words. "Teletext" tends to get excited lottery winners and lower league sportmen.

All this talk og games put me in mind of the true games master himself though. Making what may be his third apperance on this site is the irrepresispal Bamber Boozler!