BPN 1719: Flemish VTR Teletekst service ceases

The Flemish Radio and Television Organization (VRT), the Flemish/Dutch lingual part of the state sponsored BRT, will stop with the broadcasting of teletext in phases. The number of people using teletext, is decreasing in recent years, in Belgium. Only the subtitling of television programs via teletext will be continued.

VTR Teletekst service was launched on May 8, 1980 by the BRT. In 2005, 800,000 people watched the teletext pages of the VRT daily. In 2009 this figure had decreased to only 599.388 people per day in 2013 the figure was further halved to around 295.381 Flemings per day. In 2014 there were 123.709 unique visitors, according to the annual report of the VRT.

 The private Flemish news channel VTM launched its teletext on February 1, 1996. On October 31, 2014 the service was abolished. The functions were taken over by the website vtm.be and the VTM app. The subtitle function on page 888 remained available.

Turning point

After 35 years of teletext services are on a turning point. With the introduction of internet in the nineties teletext services were integrated in the websites of broadcasting companies. But now the teletext function has been taken over by apps. The BBC teletext service Ceefax is already defunct since 2012. Yet teletext services in France and Germany are still in operation. The popularity, however, of teletext is decreasing by the use of connected televisions, set-up boxes, but especially by consulting tablets and smartphones.

When will Dutch Teletekst stop?

In the Netherlands Teletekst service of the state sponsored broadcast company NOS is still pretty popular. The service was launched on April 1, 1980 with 700 consumers, who could receive teletext on their television. When commercial television was allowed in The Netherlands in 1989 teletext services were part and parcel of their broadcasts, but they never were competition for the NOS Teletekst service. With the introduction of internet the NOS Teletekst service was integrated on the Digital City web side and on the NOS broadcasting company in January 1994. In 2000 2,8 million people used the service daily, but from that point onwards the audience decreased to 2,5 million users of teletext on television. Another 2,5 million people consumed teletext on their computer, mobile or tablet. By 2014 the total figure was down to 3,5 million Teletekst users. Will the NOS Teletekst be still alive by 2020?

BPN 1410 Internet kills off Teletext UK

Today is the last day for Teletext UK. From now on the Brits will have check the arrival and departure times for planes on their computer or IPTV screens. Only special services like subtitling and the results of horse race betting will be available on analogue screens and can not be moved interactively. This will be the real end to teletext on UK television. Teletext had already been given up by the BBC and commercial broadcast companies and had been handed over to Teletext UK, a commercial company, making the service available through advertising.

In 1972, research engineers of the government owned BBC put together a number of new technological developments and found a way of making better use of the ordinary television signal.

They found that the British standard 625 line TV picture has several 'spare' lines, not used to form the screen image. Digital pulses, travelling as part of the regular TV signal, could with the aid of a decoder built into the domestic receiver, be formed into numbered panels of textual information called 'ages.' These pages look rather like pages of typescript, except that they can also include large-size letters and simple drawings; maps, graphs, diagrams, and so on, in any of six colours. Each page can carry as many as 200 words. A hand-held remote control unit could be used to select individual pages by tapping in the number of the page required. They called this system Ceefax.

The BBC was not alone in its discovery. The IBA, controllers of Britain's commercial radio and TV stations, were also developing a teletext system. They called their system Oracle: Optional Reception of Announcements by Coded Line Electronics.

Within six months the BBC had begun test transmissions of Ceefax. In 1974 all the organizations with an interest in the new information systems came together with the object of devising a unified standard. On 23 September of that year a trial experiment began for both systems culminating in the Autumn of 1976, with the government giving the green light to start full transmissions of both Ceefax and Oracle.



From 2001 onwards the service starts loosing the interest of the television companies’ management. Eventually Teletext UK takes over the services, but closes them as there is not enough advertisement revenues coming from the service.

So the country, where teletext started in 1972, will be without the service from today onwards. However on the continent, teletext is still going strong in countries like Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium and, of course , in France, where they have their own system Antiope.In the Netherlands for example the Teletekst service is still a popular service with the public broadcast, but also with the commercial broadcast stations. In fact Teletekst of the public broadcast system will celebrate its 30th launching day on April 1, 2010. The commercial stations, which only started in 1989, have used teletext. The use between the public service and the commercial service is different as commercial teletext contains pink services. So far nonen of the continental services is thinking about giving up the eldest consumer new medium.

Blog Posting Number: 1410

Tags: teletext, teletekst

My museum of content related artefacts (24)

1978: Teletekst

I have also saved two pictures of the television information and subtitling service Teletekst, which started an experimental phase on April 1, 1978. This service was based on the BBC service Ceefax (see fax). Two employees of the Dutch public broadcast service NOS, Jan Buddingh and Cees Veenendaal saw the Ceefax service in 1976 and started lobbying for introduction in the Netherlands.










On April 1, 1978 the Dutch broadcast foundation NOS started the experimental phase of Teletekst to experiment in a small church in Bussum outside broadcast city Hilversum. This period was closed with the launch of Teletekst. Project leader Wim Stokla managed a small department, which took care of the 100 pages, mainly news pages and pages with information on radio and television programs. But the department also took care of undertitling programs. On October 4,5, and 6, 1980 at the start of the new television season, the department took care of undertitling the trilogy Mourning becomes Elektra (Rouw past Elektra), a television play by John van de Rest.Teletekst was in some way a source of confusion for new media novices, so on September 5, 1978 a symposium was held under the title Viewdata and Teletekst. People had to be given an explanation that teletext was a broadcast medium transported by the ether and forwarded by cable, while for videotext information was transported over the telephone line. But by its launch Teletekst was clearly profiled as a broadcast service. The service was a broadcast medium by legal definition with moving pages. The broadcast industry did not any interference by commercial parties. With the advent of commercial broadcast companies in 1989 the teletext system became also in commercial use.

The introduction of Dutch language service Teletekst took some time as television sets needed a particular chipset. For the launch special decoder boxes were sold. However the new television sets after 1980 had a built-in chip set; such television set bore the price tag of 3000 Dutch guilders (roughly less than 1500 euro). These days it is difficult to get a television set without a teletext chip set in the Netherlands.The first Teletekst computer could store 100 pages. At the end of 1981 the computer could hold 200 pages. The Teletekst editorial staff was extended and the NOS Teletekst service had become part and parcel of the broadcasting service, according to Wim Stokla. Eventually the amount of pages grew to 1000 pages. This created space for more information categories. So next to the news and broadcast information pages new services were linked into the services. One of the most popular services before the Internet era was the Schiphol service on departure and arrival times. When in 1989 the commercial broadcasting companies atrted to broadcast, they also started to use the teletext facilities for commercial use such as (sex) advertisement. In 1995 more than 80 per cent of the Dutch households had a television with Teletekst facility.

With the arrival of Internet, Teletekst got the PC as an extra outlet. In 1993 the NOS started its own Teletekst site on internet. In 2000 the service got its own browser, which can be downloaded. In the meantime Internet and mobile phones have become extra outlets for Teletekst. This has an effect on the visits to the Teletekst pages on television, which are going down. By 2004 the viewing figure had gone down to 2,2, million people, a drop of 20 per cent since 2000.

Has Teletekst a future or will it be replaced by interactive teletext? Looking at the growth of setup boxes for digital television in Great Britain, the bell for teletext will toll in the near future. An interactive teletext service on a setup box looks more like an Internet news service and will offer more and better graphical information than the present teletext system. In the Netherlands the change over will take some time and will depend on the change over from analogue broadcast to digital broadcast.

On Tuesday April 1, 2005 the Dutch television information and subtitling service Teletekst existed 25 years. It has been the longest running and most used new media service ever.

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Blog Posting Number: 833

Tags: digital heritage