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.