Text on Text

Well, nothing has really happened in the world of teletext since my last post. Which is quite something considering it's been almost half a year.

Actully, that's not strictly accurate. A few minor occurences spring to mind. Teletext and Teletext Holidays have merged, leading to loss of forty jobs. To those forty people, that is rather major news I suppose. To me, it just suggests the continuing shift away from the old-style teletext. It will be strange in a couple of years when teletext holidays no longer is brodcast on teletext. This nugget of information was brought to my attention by Google alerts. Useful little things, though about 90% of them are about people who found out they won the lottery by looking on teletext and football managers talking about their teams league posistions. What does that tell us? Quite alot of people still use teletext for stuff like lottery results and teletext is part of our collective sporting venacular.

This was evident in the recent Cricket World Cup. Teletext enjoyed a bit of a revival. With no live coverage on terrestial television, teletext became the primary medium for keeping up to date for the huddled SkySportsless masses. Cricket has always suited teletext coverage anyway. It's about as exciting reading on teletext as actully watching it and it moves at the slowest of paces. It is also statistic heavy, if your watching a match live you might not have a clue whats going on for a few minutes as little bubbles and bars pop up telling you various aspects of the score and situation. With teletext you can fit it all in one screen, two at the most.

Something I noticed myself, Mega-Zine had what I assume was an accidental, brief return on teletext! Of course, it's still on digital teletext. Well, I assume it is, I never use it because-as I may have mentioned-it's shite. Anyway, when trying to read the Planet Sound news (p341 on c4) I instead found 8 pages of a classic Mega-Zine. Was removed a couple of hours later and alas I never got a picture.

Ten Things We Didn't Know Last Week (probably don't all need capitals) pulication on ceefax seems to have ceased, alough it was always a touch irregular. It can still be found on BBCi. Would it really cost that much to put it on a vacant Ceefax page as well? Certainly no more than the salaray of the throughly enjoyment free Chris Moyles. Read about his rant againist David Gest this week. Isn't it great when you get an egomaniac with absolutly nothing to be proud of? How many sad little campagins has he started? Honestly, does he go home and night thinking "I am the kingmaker, i raise up Peter Andre and destroy David Gest whilst making a mild differtence to the charts."

Yes, not strictly to do with teletext, but the world seems to for some reason listen to this person (I think because Radio One is the easist to get a signal for) and does irk me.

Anyway, I doubt much will be happening too soon in the world of teletext but I'll try to update when anything does. The first large regions to swich off anolouge do so next year so it'll be interesting to see what happens there.