UTV teletext (600s)

It'll hardly come as a shock to anyone that UTV have never put any effort whatsoever into their teletext service but having a look at it this morning I found the following...

p680 P&O advert with an offer which ends on 30th September 2000
p690 ElectricWorld Special Offers 2000
p614 Sports Council info which includes a phone number which has been wrong since April 2000

p672 Ad for Suzuki which must surely win an award for Least Creative Effort Ever (though p688 is almost as bad - at least it has colours)

p615 Information on DTT which includes references to UTV2, ONdigital, Carlton Food etc...
p651 "Survival Special", Sundays at 18.30
p652 That's Esther page.
P657 Generic CITV page which suggests its still finishes at 5.10pm.

Are any of the other regional teletext services THIS bad?

(By the way the header line calls the service ULSTER - not like them to let that slip through the soooooper-doooooper UTV branding machine ).

I think they're pretty much all updated infrequently. I remember that up until November last year LWT's had been updated in mid-2001 only.

I think Carlton Central gets updated reasonably frequently though. But no region uses the 600 pages to their full potential, for proper regional content, or publicises them nearly enough.

Ive just been looking at the 600's on HTV Wales and they seem perfectly upto date!

There is information about Crimestoppers and all regional programmes on ITV 1 Wales this week!

Maybe someone in Ireland doesnt realise that they are still broadcasting the service?

Is it the responsibility of Teletext UK or the regional itv company?

The Blood Transfusion page is perfectly up to date (mind you it's the only one), so they can't claim the service is no longer updated.

LOL!! Oh typical UTV, it just wouldn't seem right if it was all beautifully updated and correct! Somehow, if UTV started doing things like replacing all their 01232 codes to 028, updating web and teletext pages and other updates to keep on top of things, I think we'd have lost some of that 'charm' the station has, albeit quaint and welcome on reflection but damn irritable when the cause of a programme falling off-air mid way though or advertisments cutting in where they shouldn't, or those almost legendary ident freezes! Bring on ITV1 Ulster, ahem, sorry, I mean "Long Live UTV!"

Hardly surprising UTV Text is not up to date. Well UTV idents are not much cop either so no surprise there then.

UTV really needs to sort its self out. If not just give in to Granada. If Granada had hold of Ulster, the channel would look better.

Anyway, Granada Teletext is out of date too. It still goes on about Granada Tonight at 5:30, and when its got program pages it says "Holidays from Hell - Tuesday, 9pm ITV". No signs of ITV1 at all. Never mind.

Don't Intelfax produce virtually all the ITV regional text pages... with the glaring exception of Ulster Television's?!

The P600s are separate from the Channel 3 teletext service franchise and as such are not part of the service which Teletext provides. They are instead intended for the regional companies to provide an ancillary service there.

Most (all?) ITV contractors have contracted the provision of their service out to Intelfax (who operate a great number of teletext services) and since they are paid peanuts for it, a crap service is thus provided.

There is nothing to say that Teletext couldn't end up running these pages, but they'd have to keep it as a separate service, it couldn't just be absorbed into Teletext.

The ITV stations could make much better use of their ancillary services, but since it's now become taboo to promote any 'analogue' service over some form of 'interactive' TV or a website, they almost certainly never will.

Doesn't help that these services aren't available on digital either.

I haven't looked on it for some time now (Well you wouldn't if you got Digital) but they still have a page about where to send your comments, or go to www.gmg.co.uk , a site which no longer exists! Though they updated P600 in 1999, when Granada changed to the hearts and they diteched the rocket ship ident which you saw on P600. I don't believe the CITV page (P657) has been updated for some time now, but why bother? I don't think many people look it at it and many only bother with Teletext, not ancillary services.

Tyne Tees is little better. With a "coming soon" page that hasn't been updated in six months, a TTTV logo and North East Tonight logo outdated since 2000, news timings that until recently were the same ones that went out of date in 1998, now replaced with the same line "next news from the award" displayed twice on the bottom two lines (note the award referred to was won back in 1997 ), YTV transmitter info on the TTTV page and the mis-spelling of their own name (Tyne Tess instead of Tyne Tees) for two years until I finally got fed up and rang them.

TTTV say they have no real control over the pages, which are prepared by Intelfax with help from YTV they might as well not bother, frankly.

I can confirm that the CITV info on 657 is out of date nationwide - the 650-9 section is for national pages and, on Meridian, 657 was indeed showing the old itv.co.uk email address and 0894 competition number (and the old 3.30-5.10 broadcast times) last time I checked.