Text on Text

Well, my posts seem far too regular of late but after I spent last night declaring how unlikley it was Zine would be saved, Zine has been, well, saved. It will surivie on charmless digital teletext anyway. The move wouldn't stop the preverbial bulldozers I'm afraid. Still quite an achivment for a what is probably the best example on this planet of a group of wound-up crackpots. Still, those crazy rambling messages look much better surrounded by clunky, pixalated scenery. But still horrah for what is the only example of something interesting on Teletext being preserved. If you want to be cyinical and be branded a conspirist nutball you might suggest Zine was never going to be axed and it was all a PR a stunt. Seems less likley as it would be a PR stunt to around 700 people if their lucky.

It does beg the question however, why are Teletext and whoever at the BBC runs Ceefax, draining anything amusing from the system. Considering the BBC now says "interactive" and "blog"(see Newsnight for total overuse and over emphais, Paxman seems to prononce it BLa-GOGG) 12 times in every break they don't have but last three minutes, you'd think the'd refrain from deleting most of the columns and reviews while merging all comments pages into one poor one. It's not as if things like "quotes of the day" or proper music reviews are being replaced on digital text ,or BBCi if you will. Frankly I don't read teletext for news or weather, I turn on News 24-it's better. Actully I do read the Sci-Tech news and 10 things we didn't know last week and that's because they are interesting, suitably onscure and hard to find elsewhere. Now as teletext is gradully replaced by the internet in terms of speed and concisness, maybe even convenice, surely the best thing to do would be to have more selective pieces, not fewer. Put it this way, it's alot easier for me to find out what bloated hypocrisy factory John Prescott is up to without teletext than for me find out what new reptile has been discovered in Papa New Guina without teletext. Teletext main audience is those who aren't computer literate or those interest(eg, sites of angling in Wales reviewed) doesn't have much internet material on it. Teletext isn't realtive to the majorty of people and shouldn't be maintained as such.

Still negative rant aside, Viva la revelution contrario, y estará en el teletexto.

Time to roll out the old "people don't know what their missing till it's gone" cliche. It's not even that appropriate actually but it seemed like a good intro for a link to increasingly frantic efforts to save Mega-Aine. Bizarrely rock climbing pages have had no such response.

Anyway those at vegetable revelution have began a protest, or at least one new member claiming to be WLW has. Is he/she? Seems dubious, their is a backchat blog roaming around this site apparently edited by an ex-editor too. I can't imiange it will survive on Teletext, though after it tansfered to digital teletext I thought it might. It may survive on line, after all their have been numerous attempts to start a zine website, most, in fact all, are now defunct. The vegetable revelution fourm mainly reprints the letters on teletext. The paramount mailbox has made a decent fist of it, although contributions seemed to have decreased somewhat.

Their was probably a slight drop in quailty recently anyway, though I'm told the golden days were well before I had access to teletext. In the thread I link to their is a worringing mention had mega-zine has ended early, publishing it's final message today. I havn't checked yet,as my remotes died-hopefully some sort of error. Only because I want a letter published, being the vain but lazy person I am i havn't done it yet. Also the I link to a spefic thread as one person sums up my grivence with digital televison far more succiently than I ever could.

In what seemed an inevitbale move, considerin the amount of pages that have a massivly limited appeal, Teletext is doing a fairly large cull of it's pages on channel four. I'll update anything more I find tomorrow.

Heres a quick sum-up of the five page explanation helpfully placed on the prominet page of 304, though it only seems to be linked to on the front page of planet sound. Not that your missing much, the list of "major" changes at the end of the five page explanation(suspicously similar to the last "revamp" explanation) implies there are more not mentioned. The jist is that pages with falling readerships are being removed ahead of the switchover to digital. What disaster would befall us if we switchover to digital with teletext pages with falling readerships? Who dares to think. Theres also the genral comment that less people are using traditional teletext, more using digital. It would pull on the heart strings if Teletext didn't run both. For those who are counting I believe the word revamp is used 4 times and the phrase "expanded and enhanced" twice. Thankfullly it is the latter which befalls excellent music secton planet sound. Others ,however, are not so lucky...(set your keyboards to melo-dramtic and revel in the moment-no-ones looking)

Maybe the most surprising being "teen magazine" Ace. Stupid name aside it seemed fairly popular but teletext rating's apparently say different. I wonder how they're measured? Anyway, the letters page Mega-Zine, again crap name aside, has recieved cult status(check wikipedia if you don't believe me), even if it just seems like a place for bored students to ramble to a giraffe. Upset is a plenty, 10 years old the section-practicly an instution by teletext terms. Still it outlived great rival backchat.

Other big cut sections include It's Your Life, which seemed to be a teletext magazine for housewives, recipes, stories about people with cancer. It's success can be measured by the fact that it was created in the last "revamp" to replace something or other. Ah, now maybe that's the thing-it replaced something I can't remember, and now there disposing of it-very clever, mollify us with a section sounding like a bon jovi song and firghtfully dull, when it goes we don't care and forget why it was created. Though thats probably not true, it's a nice conspiercy. I think it replaced some form of entertainment section by the way.

Actully IYL has kind of been replace itself with a worryingly vauge health, food, etc. So more recipes and cancer abound. Other removals, include Euro Routes, Angling news and rock climbing. Maybe not a massive loss but if it's your thing...well you might be slightly vexed. Another new addition is Night Out, which describes possible nights out around the country. Not new as such. Or in fact at all. Night club and music inofrmation is already avaible on planet sound while thearte, cinema listings and the arts are already aviable elsewhere. But it will mean a clumping together.

Speaking of planet sound, it is to be expanded and moved to page 340. It's one of the more popular sections so thats not a surprise. The only worry is that as it is bascily eating Ace(taking it's pages for the those who don't comprehend such technical lanuage) it will have to be less hardcore(exuse the stupid word). The reason Planet Sound is so popular is because it's probably the best alterntive music magazine around. It's turned me on to some great bands I would never of heard of otherwise. But lets remain optimistic, afterall it's getting extra pages-which has to be good.

Another addition, pencilled in for "later this month" is extra sports and betting content in the 500's. Sounds suspiously like more adverts. This is pretty much what was done to most satillite text services at the end.

PS: I mistakenly said earlier pages with lower
readerships were being cut, in fact pages with lower viewerships were being cut. Thus the creators of teletext answer it's age old question-do you read, watch or use teletext? None it is to be viewed. And you should all do so.