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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> News and Comment >> Lament for Ceefax http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1333875841 Message started by Administrator on Apr 8^th, 2012, 9:05am

Title: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Administrator on Apr 8^th, 2012, 9:05am

This is taken from The Times:

Half a minute – I’m going to miss the slow news of Ceefax
It broke the Challenger disaster as fast as any tweet would today
by Paul Dunn
Published at 12:01AM, April 7 2012

When they switched off the BBC Two analogue signal in London and the Home Counties this week, they were also switching off a little piece of television history.

Not the channel itself, which will of course carry on, but a precious bit of Ceefax. Analogue BBC Two was the only place where you could read the Ceefax business news pages. So coverage on the original rolling news channel is being dismembered and soon there won’t be any at all.

When the remaining analogue channels go, Ceefax will die with it. Frankly, the hard to navigate replacement service behind the red button is no substitute.

It is easy to mock teletext news, with its blocky Etch A Sketch graphics made up of garishly coloured squares (the weather maps are a particular joy) and every story reduced to four paragraphs of equal length. But that is to forget how revolutionary it was 30 or so years ago in the pre-internet age.

Of course, Ceefax has its frustrations, not least the 30-second pause for the screen to switch over on multiple-page stories, which always seemed aimed at particularly slow readers — although modern TV sets had a clever way round that. But in the days when you had to wait until six or ten o’clock to find out what was happening in the world, half a minute’s wait for the punchline to a big story was no time at all.

And that very slowness sometimes works to the service’s advantage. The poet Simon Armitage has spoken about the joys of watching cricket on Ceefax and he is not alone. There is something about the slow ticking over of the pages as the score builds run by run that is perfectly suited to the rhythm of our summer game. Many a gardener will leave the TV switched on to a county match and sneak surreptitious glances through the living room window as they go about their summer mowing and weeding.

In the mid-1980s, when I worked for ITN’s rival news service for Oracle, teletext was cutting-edge technology: journalists were allowed to input their copy directly on to the screen without the intervention of typesetters or technicians. There was no deadline (at least not during broadcasting hours; these were the days before breakfast television, let alone 24-hour programming) and the bare bones of every story had to be on screen within seconds of its breaking, ideally before the opposition.

Usually news came on “the wires”: old-fashioned teleprinters that chattered endlessly and loudly away in the corner of the newsroom, but we also monitored the “live feeds” that were streamed into the building for the grown-ups who worked on the main ITN broadcast bulletins. The battles of the miners’ strikes, the IRA Brighton bomb and Michael Heseltine’s walkout from the Thatcher Cabinet were all covered in this way.

But most dramatic of all, on January 28, 1986, we were half-watching routine shots of the launch of the space shuttle Challenger being beamed in from Florida when it disintegrated on screen before us. The teletext “150” newsflash pages broke that dreadful news to Britain as fast as any tweet would today.

It’s true that teletext was, like the fax machine or the CD and the DVD, interim technology, but it was the first instant news service, constantly updated and liberated from the straitjacket of newspaper delivery boy or programme scheduler and the grandfather of today’s websites and 24-hour news cycle. I may be the last person watching, but I shall miss it.

Paul Dunn is assistant comment editor of The Times and worked as a teletext bulletin writer at ITN from 1984-86

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Roundabout on Apr 10^th, 2012, 5:02pm

I too miss the text and info on the BBC 2 analogue channel, but in a more unusual way. Despite the switch in the Midlands to digital we have kept our VHS recording system but now BBC 2 has gone there is no automatic timer update signal so the VCR clock has to be regularly checked manually. Another backwards march forwards! >:(

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by John on Apr 10^th, 2012, 6:25pm

Now there is an opportunity for some bright spark to think of a way to feed a cefax type time signal to the analogue recorders. My hard drive recorder has also lost its time setting ability. I did suggest this some time ago on another web forum but got no interest :-?

There must be quite a few people with recorders that would benefit from a time signal to automatically set the clock when the recorder is powered up.

John

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Roundabout on Apr 11^th, 2012, 6:29pm

I don't think there is any problem getting the signal to the appropriate gear it's the source of the signal that is the challenge! Surely it must already be in amongst all the signals in the digital broadcasts.

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Administrator on Apr 18^th, 2012, 8:12am

There is a cleverly-done tribute to Ceefax by Matthew Engel on the BBC News site.
You can read it by clicking here.
(You have to scroll through to read the whole thing).

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Director_General on Apr 19^th, 2012, 8:19am

Can anyone explain why the French, Germans, Belgians, Dutch, Swiss, Austrians etc. etc. manage to retain a simple useful ceefax-like service alongside their digital pictures?

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by JohnW on Apr 19^th, 2012, 9:50am

Isn't the 'Digital Text' feature adequate, as is available through Freeview or the Red button?
To me, that provides pretty much all the features that Ceefax had, but in a far more readable font. And it's very much quicker!
True, you don't get as much to the display page(!) but it's not too much trouble to press the down or forward arrows to read the remainder/next story! And, if you know the Page No of what you regularly want (such as Shares, etc.), you can input that directly via the remote.

One advantage I see of this (on my Sony set at least!) is that you get Picture in Picture function (i.e. you can see the normal channel - in a reduce picture size - whilst reading the texts).

Title: Re: Lament for Ceefax
Post by Amigo on Apr 19^th, 2012, 4:08pm

In the 70's I remember helping to demonstrate Ceefax at UK Party Conferences in Blackpool during the lunch-time interval. The remote control was wired directly to the back of the large TV receiver.

It was difficult to explain to all and sundry why there was a delay between clicking the page number and it actually appearing on he screen.