Teletext

1974, the birth of teletext. Those strange luminous digits and letters you used to see your uncles stare at on a Saturday evening, while you wondered why the television had stopped showing pictures.

CEEFAX was the first teletext facility developed in the world by the BBC. CEEFAX was initially developed when engineers were exploring the possibilities of providing subtitles, enabling viewers with hearing problems to enjoy the BBC television programmes. These engineers developed a way to exploit the unused capacity of the 625 line television signal to send information. Instead of displaying a picture, a tv could now display a text at the press of a button.

A major objective during the concept development was to make teletext an affordable service for all home users. Although this was hard to come by with 1970’s technology, the low cost concept was essential for the projects long term success.

In January 1974, S.M Edwardson and A. Gee of the BBC published an article ‘A Proposed New Broadcasting Service’. This document entailed the completion of field trials of a system which can transmit a “magazine” of 32 “pages” of text for display to a home TV screen. In March 1974, BBC reached an agreement on the standards for a unified system. CEEFAX was now live as a news reader available to every British TV. Live news including sport and media were now easily accessible LIVE.

Things accelerated in 1975 when an experienced journalist Bob Paterson was appointed as the BBC’s first sports editor. CEEFAX already provided a basic football result service but things were quickly put into fast order. Paterson himself said “Ultimately it was CEEFAX claim to fame that we could get up the final scores before any of the TV channels and in some cases before the games had finished!”

From stories told by my uncle of boarding school boys all hunched over staring at a small 10 inch screen, the Ceefax teletext is without a doubt an iconic service that changed the world of sports broadcasting. It was the first insight into score updates we can easily receive on our phone today within seconds of a goal or an event occurring.

In October 2012, the BBC chose to switch off the red button teletext service Ceefax and decided to go forward with a digital service. Although Ceefax is no longer available, the foundations it created have led to advancements in red button features in assisting deaf viewers and improving their viewing experience.

~ Michael