ITV should go fully commercial, and hand over the regional commitments and spectrum to Channel 4, as it seems to be more public service. Any money ITV recieve from the License Fee/Government etc should then revert to Channel 4
Why should C4 pick up the slack from ITV? Incorporating regional news and other PSB responsibilities ITV no longer deem profitable would be the death of C4!
OFCOM's solution for regional news is quite questionable - rather than ITV pay for it, they're proposing setting up a fund, which it turns out would be funded by ITV having to pay the market rate to provide ITV2/3/4 on Freeview.
Haven't read too much of what Ofcom have said but the stuff about ITV makes sense.
I think it's a good thing that it should just be allowed to do what it does best - be a populist commercial channel. Reducing and simplifying it's regulation, leaving behind just basic rules about production quotas and news, means it can be a much better channel.
The idea of contracting out it's regional news is an interesting one. It would be really interesting to see what the news agencies and bigger newspaper groups would do with a regional news service, like they have in some areas at breakfast
Obviously the argument re: the internet is valid, but surely just as it's important for the BBC to have rival broadcasters providing PSB services, the same should apply to the text service.
My interpretation of this isn't that Ofcom's trying to kill off Teletext.
The argument is whether a separate Teletext licence will still make sense in 2014, complete with specific requirements.
It could well be the case that Teletext and ITV or C4 reach a suitable carriage deal. Come to think of it, they may have one already though don't quote me.
The old stand-alone digital Teletext service on Ch100 on Freeview was certainly a licenced service which used space granted to the company from the ITC when DTT started.
But I think the services you get when you press Text on ITV and C4's digital channels are the result of deals between the broadcasters and Teletext, even if the content is largely the same.
A bit of a technicality... but I think reports of the impending death of Teletext may be greatly exaggerated although, having read Ofcom's document, I can understand how it might look to someone glancing through it.
There still should be a place for CEEFAX, Teletext and 4-Tel in this forced digital age. If anything, Digital Text should go. It is much slower and confusing than the terrestrial versions. With CEEFAX et al. you put the numbers in and you wait a few seconds. With Digital Text, you have to load it up, put the number in, searches for it, press a news story, back up the news story and come out of Digital Text - it takes about three minutes. Whereas, Teletext et al. can be done in less than a minute - if you are quick enough.
Digital Text should go and be replaced by whatever 4-Tel and the rest use - whatever it is. More quicker and less time consuming.
There still should be a place for CEEFAX, Teletext and 4-Tel in this forced digital age. If anything, Digital Text should go. It is much slower and confusing than the terrestrial versions. With CEEFAX et al. you put the numbers in and you wait a few seconds. With Digital Text, you have to load it up, put the number in, searches for it, press a news story, back up the news story and come out of Digital Text - it takes about three minutes. Whereas, Teletext et al. can be done in less than a minute - if you are quick enough.
Digital Text should go and be replaced by whatever 4-Tel and the rest use - whatever it is. More quicker and less time consuming.
But do people really need or use these services anymore? For example, you've clearly not used 4-Tel in the last five years, or you'd have discovered it's now called FourText.
There still should be a place for CEEFAX, Teletext and 4-Tel in this forced digital age. If anything, Digital Text should go. It is much slower and confusing than the terrestrial versions. With CEEFAX et al. you put the numbers in and you wait a few seconds. With Digital Text, you have to load it up, put the number in, searches for it, press a news story, back up the news story and come out of Digital Text - it takes about three minutes. Whereas, Teletext et al. can be done in less than a minute - if you are quick enough. Digital Text should go and be replaced by whatever 4-Tel and the rest use - whatever it is. More quicker and less time consuming.
But do people really need or use these services anymore? For example, you've clearly not used 4-Tel in the last five years, or you'd have discovered it's now called FourText.
Precisely. Mainly because my Channel 4 Text cannot come onto my television for some reason. "Do people need to use these services?" I think there is still a place for it. This will sound contradictory but there is an over-reliance on technology these days to provide news. Compare text-based information with news channels. There are an overabundance of news channels stretching out news to a time limit while the Text-based News tells a news story in one or two pages. It is more convenient and I am positive that millions of others will agree with me. As I am sure that there will be a lot for your case as well.
And it's still quicker and easier to stick on BBC News or Sky News for 5 minutes and find out what's going on, than to slowly navigate a dinosaur of an interactive service (I'm referring to CEEFAX / Oracle / Teletext). It was an amazing system for it's time, but it's time for it to retire. I would hazard that more people check the news headlines on their mobile phones than use CEEFAX on a daily basis.
Digital Teletext is far superior to the analogue service now - mainly thanks to them keeping the same page numbering system for it, but with increased control over navigating pages etc.
However, the same can't be said for the BBC - it's the dodgy page numbering that ruins their digital service and if they simplified it and numbered all pages, not just the indexes, it would be an improvement on Ceefax.
There still should be a place for CEEFAX, Teletext and 4-Tel in this forced digital age. If anything, Digital Text should go. It is much slower and confusing than the terrestrial versions. With CEEFAX et al. you put the numbers in and you wait a few seconds. With Digital Text, you have to load it up, put the number in, searches for it, press a news story, back up the news story and come out of Digital Text - it takes about three minutes. Whereas, Teletext et al. can be done in less than a minute - if you are quick enough.
Digital Text should go and be replaced by whatever 4-Tel and the rest use - whatever it is. More quicker and less time consuming.
But do people really need or use these services anymore? For example, you've clearly not used 4-Tel in the last five years, or you'd have discovered it's now called FourText.
Teletext on 4 these days I think.
:-(
A former member
Teletext was the internet of the past. if you wanted any information it was there on you tv. but now you have internet that gives you the same amout of information.
now of course some people still don;t have the internet/computer so there must be some sought of teletext in place for these people.
I believe that digital text is crap aswell. to slow and not as good