26th Anniversary of the biggest shake up in ITV

It failed mainly because of the fragmented nature of American TV. They didn't have a duopoly of to broadcasters who could decide and develop a universal system and then roll it out across their channels.


Instead a few stations and networks experimented with different systems and formats but there wasmt a universal system and people weren't going to pay for the decoders for a service that only a handful of stations used, especially of there was only 1 in a market.

It was very unlike their subtitles system which was standardised. They were one of the most popular features of teletext in Europe, but couldn't be in the US.

I've no doubt the TV companies there could have made money out of teletext if properly standardised, promoted and rolled out by the networks. Doesn't have to be holidays they sold of course, could have been anything. the city based nature of their stations could have meant small ads would work well

The only other use for it I saw sa an alarm clock page on Ceefax in the 80s. You entered the time you want and then the button that put teletext in the background when you were waiting for the next page to appear, and am alarm clock graphic appeared at that time

Also used on many sets to request a specific sub page (which was the equivalent of putting the current page on hold, waiting for the right page to come up and putting that one on hold - it was never any quicker!)

I struggled to understand the logic of re-allocating the lines used by Oracle to non-public services given the large (and increasing) number of households around 1990 that had a teletext enabled TV and how teletext decoders were standard on most mid-range TVs at the time.

What did the ITV companies think of it? Would they have bought up most of the lines used by Oracle and run their own separate teletext services?



They probably did the maths and calculated that it would have cost more than £6.7m a year to buy enough pages to provide a comparable service to what they were already providing.

It's very easy, and was done by Ceefax, Oracle, and Teletext Ltd etc, to make the relevant data 'invisible' to domestic receivers. Each VBI line could carry a totally independent service. That was implemented post 1993, with Teletext Ltd pages on some lines, and inserted at the Tx sites, and the ancillary '600-699' pages provided by the ITV companies, and inserted at their studios, (this also included 888 subtitle data, something else that had been totally overlooked by the ITC initially !!)

I'm well aware of this, and how to make the invisible data visible. One concern with non-public services using VBI lines is the ease in which potentially confidential data can be eavesdropped unless encryption is used.

That was probably far less of a problem in the 90s, than it is now

Nothing to stop anyone who bought the VBI space using it for a WST service that viewers could see or use on their TV. It was that there was to be no public service license.

The bandwidth could have been used for anything. As you say they'd be daft not to take advantage of the decoders. Could probably make more money that way than a closed system


Not unless they'd be able to profit from doing that. Wasn't Oracle owned by the ITV companies though?


They wouldn't have to provide a comparable service, if it was commercial space, they could do whatever they wanted within ITC rules. However of course they'd be competing with companies who had deeper pockets. They couldn't make as much money from their existing information service as someone who was doing it for purely commercial reasons

What I meant by non-public services are data broadcasting for use by banks, retailers etc. that are not intended for public viewing as opposed to teletext pages for the public to read about fun but frivolous subjects.



What sort of stuff do you think should have been shown on the ITV teletext pages after 1992? Tales about exploring haunted houses!?

I know what you meant, my point however was that the lines weren't allocated to non-public services as you stated.


There wasn't going to be any obligation to have public service content like the rest of 'channel 3' - could have been private data, could have been publicly viewable... but importantly it didn't have to be PSB content


What are you on about?

I don't know what I think matters, but what should have been on there was what ended up on there - a PSB teletext service.

But again I think you've missed my point totally.

Some very good points made can I offer some more information – sorry it’s long!

The commercial success of Oracle / Teletext ltd (and why not USA)

It was said that over half (and may be even three-quarter of the holidays booked in the UK were done via Teletext ..... (And may be Oracle)
And although this drove others to use teletext as a means of advertising – I remember page wars between Nike and Adidas ... there was also the fact that the UK audience use teletext both Ceefax and Oracle/Teletext for all sorts of instant information News headlines football results and (all channels) TV listings etc.(and Bamboozle!) So the “text on your Tv” was the place to go
... just as it is now on your phone or tablet.

If it had been just advertising – I don’t think it would have been so successful – and it was the lack of understanding of the need for his more “public service” material that the Americans could not get their mind around (or threat to local print media) – as well as the technical matter of only having the capacity to carry 32 characters per Tv line so that the fifth Tv line had four sets of 8 bytes to complete the text rows,,,! As well as comments already made
It worked but not overwhelming elegant... although 32 characters per TV lien 64 per frame was a lot more than EIA 601 closed captions 2 characters per frame!!!!
BTW The UK and Switzerland were the only major countries to have non Video broadcasters providing a text service....

Government selling off the VBI

It was not only Oracle which was under threat by David Mellor – the BBC was also under pressure to sell off its VBI (and Ceefax pay the company for the space to broadcast)
See the story and a lot more on BBC teletext by Peter Weitzel in this SMPTE lecture slide pack https://www.smpte.org/sections/united-kingdom/events/untold-stories-teletext-celebrating-40-years-digital-broadcasting
And how as a result the Ceefax origination system put out more TV lines of teletext text than were emitted!

Databroadcasting – this was another thing before its time

Obviously it has relevance for information that needs to be transmitted everywhere instantaneously – so Betting shops, the stock exchanges and Stolen credit card numbers ( certain filling stations would close down within 30 mins if they lost the signal) etc.. But also for other “additional communications channel like a Fax/telex like systems for farmers (whose phone lines were always busy – this worked with an integrated Datacast printer. – and sort of “overnight updates” such as what BMW second had cars are available.... or they adverts in the kiosks that were in the Post office for you to look at while queuing – and of course Presfax and Telfax for BBC own use! Most Datacast services were at least scrambled if not (simply) encrypted... so even if you had a receiver it was difficult it decode the data.... But as mentioned in the SMPTE lecture one Belgian customer wanted to blow up stolen decoders!

Across Europe the Major broadcasters had teletext services but nothing as complex or sophisticated as in the UK.... where there was the "additional service" Oracle / Teletext and most of Ceefax (and DBI and Datacast) and the "ancillary service" from the broadcaster own listings, PDC, packet 8/30f1(BDSP) and Subtitles. and the techies wanted test signals as well!

In fact most Europe’s broadcasters did only their own channel listings unlike in the UK where the text services on BBC1,BBC2,ITV, Ch4,Ch5 and Sky1 all carried each other’s listings and hence were an additional service ! I think they would be very surprised now with platform EPG meaning that you can see the other channel listings at all time! On the other hand the first open Standard EPG EN 300 707 uses teletext..... Both text and Independent data line databroadcasting

Also it was around / after the millennium that the largest number of Text origination equipment were sold ... at a time when Ceefax and Teletext were running down!

An effort was made by the FCC to come up with a standard, but as I understand it, while the TV manufacturers and most US broadcasters wanted to adopt the BBC/IBA standard, a few -including CBS- felt the French system was far superior.