Text on Text

The RTE teletext service, Artel celebrates it's 20th anniversary today. Marketed as an "electronic newspaper" upon it's conception, that is largely what it is. It terms of style it's very similar to Ceefax. Frankly, I rarely use it because I don't get it on my TV but it is well packaged onto the internet by RTE. If I don't already have a link to it I will post one shortly. It does seem to be slightly more limited graphically in terms of how many colours and backgrounds. In that way it's quite similar to UK teletext ten years ago as it also has a greater depth of service than Teletext or Ceefax. Perhaps, and I do mean perhaps as this may not be accurate, this is because RTE doesn't have an equivalent digital service to maintain. In fact Artel is still carried on RTE's sky service, though it doesn't always work that well.

According to the article from which I found this out (I was going pretend I counted the days but...) Artel is used daily by one in five people. I'm not aware of the corresponding UK figures but that seems pretty high for only people who use it daily. Especially when you consider there is a good number of people who, despite it's total simplicity, are mightily confused by teletext of all kinds. Not even necessarily old people, in fact they use it more than most. If you've ever read the letters pages on teletext, pensions are quite the hot topic. Very few think they are too high.

Although probably a similar proportion of people have Sky or some similar service in the RoI as in the UK, you do get a sense Artel is a bit more widely used than Ceefax and certainly more valued. So congratulations to it on it's 20th birthday. There are currently no plans in the Republic for a terrestrial switch off so it may well outlast the 30 something Ceefax!