Text on Text

I noticed recently on Ceefax news that Tessa Jowel(Culture minister I think)has released a statement about the digital switchover. I read it and I can only assume it's being released under the same philopsy that allows bands to re-release their early singles when they get famous. It's almost exactly the same and I'm not going to bother linking to it. TV chiefs(mmm, tabloidy)got all this in person because I survey showed that they were left confused about the switchover, when it was and what exactly is happening. I would marvel at that clear ineptitude and lack of intelligence but with programmers like Celebrity Wrestling, Celebrity Shark Bait and Celebrity Sky Diving(not sure of real title but thats the concept) on ITV and No sex please were teenagers and Bring Your Huspand to Hell(sorry, heel) that has already been done.

I've been noticing increased creativity over at Bamber Boozler. After being very simlar for about 7 years he, or rather his creators, have been making things more interesting. Recents highlights include upside down bamber, a picture of the creators of Bamber(badly drawn using teletext in a reveal at the end)and less recently a green suit on St Patricks day. There are more but my memory is, to put it bluntly, shit.

If anyone seen my not that well executed attempt to start a world teletext day early this year you may well have reason to doubt this, but I assure you it is entirly true. There is indeed a National Teletext Month. Or rather their was in 1982. It probably hasn't been celebrated alot since. But this year it shall. God knows how but somehow. If you still don't believe heres a link to the exact page http://teletext.mb21.co.uk/timeline/oct81/rt-article.shtml. There ya go.

Around 40 teletext journalists are going to be sacked along with half of an editing team. This is only from one source but since it was the Journalists Union(or something simlar) it's probably accurate. Though they don't reconize the Teletext journalists as proper members so basicly they aren't going to do anything. This is being done because Teletext(the company) wishes to focous more on it's website, Tv channel, holiday companies and novelty mugs. One of those may not be true. I suppose their reckoning is their is very little money left in teletext. Though considering the amount advertisers must pay to display their ads on a system more widly used than the internet and the not-exactly-state of the art technology involved I'd say theirs still alot of profit margin there.

Teletext does have a chance at a resurge in the futre years though, I think, for two main reasons. People in the UK are moranicly nostalgic. Look at Live 8, the last few bands were all stale, middle age and up bands from the sixties and seventies. The current music scene as a strong as that of the those years, better in my opinion, but they were told to close the show. When historinas look back now they are going to think the biggest bands around in 2005 were The Who, Pink Floyd and Paul McCartney. Docter Who is another example. But I digress. My point is once people realise that Teletext is soon to disapeer they get very sentimental about it. "Backdrop to out lives" is the pharse I'm betting on. The other reason is Mr Burns real-life equivlent, no not Sven, but Rupert Mordoch and his burning diseare to own every sport ever played ever.Ever.From next year cricket is leaving terrestial. No big loss in my book, it's easier to understand on teletext and it doesn't have Geoffry Boycott. Football is slowly being played to death on Sky Sports and no with no rolling results service on Saturdays never mind the other days Teletext's updatiabilty(not a word) is very important.

Instead of creating a new post I thought I'd just edit this hastily finished old one. A little news on the blog itself first. By looking through by sitemetre I've noticed that since William Gallagher left Ceefax alot of my hits have been lost die hard fans looking for his site. I proudly tell them I have a link. I try the link last night. It doesn't work. Not sure why, but it seems to link to somewhere entirly different than I tell it. Well despite my valient attempts to fix it, it ,er, isn't fixed. What I have cunningly done however is post the adress(which is correct) under link text so a quick copy and paste should do. If that doesn't work, well, he's not that good.

I can't seem to find any other information on that journalist sacking thing so it may not be true. I doubt anyone, bar those journalists and their friends and family, are interested but just in the interests of accuracy.

I stopped doing a teletext thing of the day a while ago, for two reasons really. 1) It's alfully tedious tracking down the numbers and B) I would be running short of ideas about now. But the Teletext section I've been using most often recently is Planet Sound on C4 text. For quick, up to date and well written news and reviews of music only the NME website comes close. And you don't get the almost terminal amount of smugness and thousands of refernces to Pete Docherty. Though they seem to be giving up on him now that theres a slight whiff of doubt about his talent. Decent letters page with Speakeasy ad that has been there for around seven years and varying sections depending on days including demos, roots, hip-hop, reggae. They also manage to find 8-9 pages of music news daily, which is pretty impressive.

One news-like thing I got through my google-alerts recently was from the BBC website editor(yes he exsists) private column. Appearntly the first three paragraghs of the BBC website report are used for the Ceefax news. He mused over the cleverness of this for a while but failed to realise it often leads to headlines that don't make sense. I've seen a few of them but the most recent was something like "Pasily condems roiters" but of course the report contained no such condemnation, it may well have done on the BBC website, but not on Ceefax. Not so clever.

I havn't checked my Ceefax alerts for a while(though there are genraly less of them and are mostly about lottery winners who "just turned on Ceefax" to find out they won) so I may have a few new pieces of news soon. If I've a few ideas for posts anyway. A less hasty goodbye.