Teletext

So the BBC is about to turn off a very useful function for those of us who do not wish to lash out on smartphones or connect our TVs to the Internet. From the very inception of teletext (a generic term which was briefly copyright by ITV for its own service - Ceefax was the name chosen by BBC for the scheme which it had pioneered) it was useful to pull up reactions to events as they were shown on the box. For instance, one could gauge market reaction (e.g. the value of sterling or of stocks on the London exchange) to news or look at football results and tables.

The first teletext made use of the spare lines in analogue transmissions which did not appear on the screen. The displayed characters were those devised by Sam Fedida of the then Post Office research organisation for its Prestel system.

With an appropriate card (such as those made by Hauppauge) in ones computer one could capture the teletext digital stream. Indeed, I devised a suite of programs (in COBOL, not the easiest vehicle for list processing!) for my PC which would automatically read the pages containing the football results and generate tables. It worked for just over a year before it was overtaken by the switch from analogue to digital TV transmission.

Digital saw an improvement in the quality of the characters displayed and I have continued to refer to teletext virtually every day. If BBC cannot maintain this last redoubt on UK television, perhaps a provider which is at least as well endowed and under no pressure from stockholders can take it over? I look to you, al Jazeera.