The Life and Death of Teletext | A Mini-Documentary

In 1972, The BBC Began Experimenting with a Brand New System Called CEEFAX. And Here we are nearly 50 Years Later. After 2 weeks of research about CEEFAX and Teletext as a whole, as well planning this out, here are the fruits of my labour.
Shoutouts to TaleOfTheToaster and Mr. Nick Weston
Tale's Platforms:
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Nick's Twitter:
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Sources:
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[@97channel]

Just to help fill in a few details, Channel 4 broadcast Oracle as its main teletext provider but also broadcast its own service 4-Tel within a 100 page subsection. The death of Oracle came about because of a piece of government legislation known as the Broadcasting Act 1990. ITV was the umbrella brand for a network of local TV stations and one national breakfast TV service. Each of these companies had to bid in a blind auction to maintain their franchise. Initially, the Oracle services on ITV and Channel 4 were to be auctioned to the highest bidder, regardless of their intent of its use. But Oracle successfully appealed to have the teletext service remain with whichever company bid the most money yet met criteria for providing essentially the same service. In a bitter twist of fate, they lost their franchise to a company called Teletext Ltd. Oracle continued for just over a year beyond this knowledge, and its closedown on the 31st of December 1992 was immediately followed by the takeover of services called Teletext On 3 and Teletext On 4. 4-Tel was unaffected by the change. Other bare-bones text services existed on satellite and cable, and in 1997 a fifth terrestrial TV channel began broadcasting which carried limited text pages called 5-Text. It was never much of a service, and at some point in the early 2000's was replaced by Teletext on 5, same company running the service for channels 3 and 4. 2009 saw Teletext announce the end of its services. Its closure was undignified, it discontinued all but its advertising services on the platforms and was fined £225,000 for breaking its contract to provide news and information, then it continued for a while as effectively a pirate service illegally operating on the platform it once legally occupied. Ceefax had a more dignified end, by bowing out with the end of analogue transmission on BBC TV in 2012. The service was very little used by that point.

[@EdvardiJ]

Woah thanks for all this information!!! For some reason I couldn't find too much on the end of Oracle or the lesser known forms of Teletext, so this comment helped me learn quite a bit. I'll pin it so more people can see it!!!

[@BruceDanton-xw6eg]

You are so right there too.

[@simhthmss]

That was such a strange broadcast where they say "well that's it forever".

[@kayshaa24h]

Lmfao I'm Welsh but why did that announcement make me feel emotional 🤣🤣🤣. The guy for BBC one Wales said it so much more sadly than the English one who was so optimistic about it.

[@EdvardiJ]

It did for me too! You'd have thought the entire channel would be shutting down with how Sombre the message was haha

[@TaleOfTheToaster]

Bloody brilliant this, mate. Such a visual treat, and from a documentary on Teletext of all things! Never expected such a colourful journey to cover one of the most historically basic screens in television history. Glad to have helped, can't wait to see what on earth you choose next. I better make sure to use the BBC Red Button one last time...

[@johnwiiu7005]

Teletext still has 10 Million users in germany. It's easy to understand, the news are often short and punctual. And private channels still have teletext porn. Yeah. Thats still a thing here xP

[@EdvardiJ]

Hahah that’s quite bizarre, though it’s interesting to hear! What company is responsible for Germany’s Teletext?

[@johnwiiu7005]

@@EdvardiJ Also, funfact! A few months ago ARD Teletext had it's 40th anniversary and sent users free booklets about the history and art of teletext in Germany. I got one too!

[@EdvardiJ]

Woah that’s amazing!! I’ll look into ARD Text further! Especially since I’ve been planning to update this video with a more “international” approach. I saw that you commented something longer earlier but I can’t find it anymore, do you know what happened to it?

[@robrob2982]

I used to be obsessed with Teletext and Ceefax growing up. Let me know if you want more info on it from experience perspective

[@EdvardiJ]

Absolutely! Please do share! You can put it here in the comments, or you can send it to my email ([e-mail]) :)

[@SasuKrow]

I remember browsing around my country's teletext up till the mid 00s when I was a kid. It was fun, I liked the interactive experience. I got a PC and went on the internet pretty late so this was something like a substitute. Well, not really, but it still grabbed my attention.

[@EdvardiJ]

Ah that’s amazing! Hearing stories like this amaze me because yeah Teletext was pretty much the internet, but without the actual internet haha. Thanks for watching!!

[@zezan321]

Same here

[@what-uc]

The original reseach for teletext was for closed captions, but the potential was seen for an information system. BBC and ITV (or more correctly IBA who managed the network) created their own systems, but agreed on a unified specification in 1976. The broadcast of pages in the normal TV picture during downtime was to promote the real service. Overnight broadcasts were much later, by then was just the standard downtime filler. It got off the ground in the UK because there was a public service ethos in broadcasting, even on the commerical side. There was no need for immediate profit. Once it became a standard option in European TVs other countries started text services. ORACLE was a great name for a source of information. The explanation for its name was clearly a bit of fun. The whole point of teletext is that with a teletext set you could select pages AT ANY TIME, because the data was transmitted in the hidden part of the TV picture. It was cutting edge in the 70s, up-to-date in the 80s, popular in the 90s, but with the rise of digital TV and the internet going into the 2000s waned quickly. The commercial operator on ITV stopped providing a service in 2009 because it was no longer profitable.

[@MartinFarrell1972]

Pre-internet. I used Teletext in the 80's as a teenager. Music pages and computer pages (like a digital magazine). Could spend hours on it. One time I had put subtitles on because my mum was on the phone. I went to bed forgetting to turn them off. Both my parents didn't know how to turn it off and couldn't change channel. My dad evemtually got the hang of it. He's 82 now and has the internet. He tends to use it to book holidays and chat.

[@Stelios78910]

I starred in a short film about TV licensing in the 1970s, and I must say despite not being there the video quickly immersed me into the 70s, and the rest of the doc was great as well.

[@EdvardiJ]

Woah that's brilliant!! And I'm glad you enjoyed it :)

[@MrDannyDetail]

Bamboozle was not on Ceefax, it was on Teletext on 4 from when it took over from Oracle on 1st January 1993. Another thing that maybe needs explaining is that the various integrated teletext services (Ceefax, Oracle, Teletext) could be used at any time 24/7 by pressing the text button on a teletext compatible television set to see the hidden text and interact with it. If you did not have a teletext compatible television you could still see what teletext pages looked like because during early morning, and sometimes other dead times, they would broadcast a sort of tv programme that consisted of teletext pages changing maybe every 20 seconds or something with muzak playing thoughout but which had no interactivity for the viewer as every viewer in the country would be seeing the same sequence of pages being broadcast as a programme. I mention this as it seems your facts alternate between relating to 'teletext as a hidden interactive text service' and 'teletext as a sort of tv programme with bad muzak'.

[@MartinFarrell1972]

During these times I used to access the demo pages they were showing to compare the quality

[@hauskalainen]

This video gets some things right and some things wrong. Teletext TV receivers had special circuitry to decode the signals transmitted as dots. Some had memories to store pages but really sets relied on you selecting a page which would be displayed when that page was rebroadcast. That could take 30 seconds, but when the circuits had better memories the display would be almost instantaneous. Eventually most sets had the circuits and the memory and so more data was available from the broadcasters.

[@EdvardiJ]

Thanks for all that information! This is the first concise explaination I’ve seen as to what was actually happening haha. Concise information regarding the innerworkings of Teletext were incredibly hard to come by, and with my limited knowledge of the technology, I simply tried to “condense” what I sort of understood. Probably would’ve been beneficial had I left the “technological” part altogether in hindsight. Either way, thanks a ton :)

[@hauskalainen]

@@EdvardiJ you are very welcome.

[@AndRewUK24]

Bamboozle which is the best quiz on TV in British history.

[@Lauren94twitch]

i was born in 94 and i remember seeing the news and peoples digital art and the quiz and jokes

[@turbojurpo]

In Finland we still have teltext it's name is teksti tv translated it means text tv and it's kinda fun to browse it and see what's going on

[@EdvardiJ]

Woah That’s really cool! Is it still on analogue or is it on digital?

[@EdvardiJ]

Woah That’s really cool! Is it still on analogue or is it on digital?

[@turbojurpo]

@@EdvardiJ It's digital analog has died out allready

[@EdvardiJ]

@@turbojurpo interesting! I think teletext can be useful in a lot of places tbh. I’ll do some research on teksti tv, because it sounds interesting! If you have anything you’d like to share about it shoot me an email :)

[@sherifkhaled8620]

Teletext began in Egypt first time since 1992 broadcast 2 languages Arabic and English

[@simhthmss]

I used to love ceefax teletext, there were even games you could play by pressing the 4 teletext colour buttons. There was pixel art as well.

[@zetametallic]

Tale of the Toaster @6:06 "It looked like shite." As a UK viewer that made me laugh so much😂😂😂😂😂. It did but it was OUR shite and we loved it. I used to sag off school and play Bamboozle on Tuesday afternoons at my friends house (Year 11) as it was PE, we'd have a smoke; 1992, so long ago now.

[@tsimeone]

Ah i remember pen pals on C4, still speak to people today.

[@Nickelbender]

Here in Finland teletext or as we know it TextTV is still in common use, its still in service and many people use it(Mostly old people). The system is quite useless tough because of the internet but still it is completely operational here.

[@illarterate]

Teletext will never die! :-D

[@EdvardiJ]

Long live Teletext! (Love your profile picture by the way ;)

[@illarterate]

@@EdvardiJ The pic is from a sports quiz on an old teletext service! His name was Brian and he would ask the questions. :-) Rewatched the documentary just now. It was a great potted history of the subject! I enjoyed the user quotes. I like listening to people's experiences with things like teletext and old video game consoles etc. I still use the Red Button! I'm glad the campaign to save it was successful. I spoke to Sarah from the Federation for the Blind on a podcast last year. Lots of people still use the Red Button but they aren't online, so it was a case of going and finding them. As Germany might say, 'Dieser Teletext App ist fantastisch!' Except in proper German, or something.

[@EdvardiJ]

@@illarterate It's amazing that you still use the red button! It's a relic of history sooooo many took for granted! That little bit of convenience goes a long way to some people, so I'm very glad that the Red Button campaign was successful! I've also noticed that you're very cemented in the teletext community! I'd love to chat with you one day about it if you're interested. It's a very captivating yet underrepresented subject I must admit. My email is located on my channel's about page if you're interested! :)

[@shadytube84]

Sky Text… long live the 459’ers!!!

[@seandean8293]

I remember my dad using it everyday

[@arielatomhc]

The start of Alien advanced Technology.

[@nh-vb8ij]

What's with the dark glasseS?

[@melodyvalentine8779]

I'm gonna go through the comments when I get back home to see if anyone can remember the forums where you could either write in or ring up and leave a comment or question and people would do the same to reply. There was a basic one, for any topic, kinda like the Facebook of the 90s but miles slower and harder and there was one on channel 4s version of teletext that was about music. I remember the gaming one with sonic the hedgehog as a front page , I remember the bamboozle quiz page but I can't remember the names of the other two I mentioned but I'd be straight on it when I got home from middle school so around 97/98, maybe a little earlier and later too but I definitely remember doing it in 97 and 98

[@EdvardiJ]

Wow, that’s actually really cool! Teletext had a lot of really cool knicks and knacks, and this one has to be the absolute most interesting to hear

[@melodyvalentine8779]

@@EdvardiJ Yeah it was great, for the times. I remember the music one would serve as a Google sort of thing for people who couldn't make out certain song lyrics so they'd ask on there. I'm gonna have a little dig about on Google and see if I can find the names and any links I find I'll post them here x

[@EdvardiJ]

Thankfully I saved that last link 😄! Thanks for doing all this digging though, for some reason it’s truly nostalgic to read through even though I’ve never used it myself hahah

[@melodyvalentine8779]

My comments with links keep getting deleted but I've found the thing I was I was on about, still can't remember the name of the music one but the main one was called Backchat and you could write, phone or fax (possibly email as it did exist then but I'm not sure) with comments, the music one would have people recommend songs/albums/artists, and review new releases which was a much bigger deal back then. People would be listening to the top 40 on the radio to see if their favourite band or singer had made it to number one and be taping it at the same time.

[@EdvardiJ]

@@melodyvalentine8779 Wow, imagine all this through the old television. Teletext made use of the limited analogue technology and produced such amazing things. Absolutely brilliant!

[@scottpeacock5492]

I'm sorry but you have got some facts wrong here, Channel 4 started Breakfast television much eariler as April 1989 with the Channel Four Daily and The Big Breakfast replace The Channel Four Daily in September 1992, 4Tel on View disappeared when Channel 4 went 24 hours Janurary 1997 4:50

[@BruceDanton-xw6eg]

That was right too.

[@Hchris101]

The UK