Saturday, July 18, 2009

Killjoys on the rampage part 3: Goodbye Teletext

I just found out today that Teletext, the on-screen text information service shown on ITV and Channel 4, is to end in January 2010.

And I'm rather gutted about this. Yes I know you can find out anything on the internet, but it's been a daily ritual for me, for many many years at EuropeCrazy HQ to visit my favourite teletext pages, from local news and sport to ITV's entertainment pages with the soaps round-up and viewers' 'talking points', to my favourite of all - Channel 4's music section "Planet Sound" with its news, reviews, interviews and 'The Void' letters page (ok I'm showing my age now....texts, then!).

And let's not forget Bamboozle with Bamber Boozler, the pixellated quizmaster ;)

They will all be much missed.

2 comments:

Raquelita said...

That's rubbish.I'm an insomniac so am more of a "Ceefax on BBC2 at 3am with muzak" type person,but Bamboozle was brilliant! I have many a happy memory of myself playing it as a 6 year old while waiting for my dinner.Think I only won about twice,but still...I didn't know it was still around actually.

I remember my dad flicking through all the holiday pages on there too (bet they don't exist anymore),and I think we actually booked something from there once.Life pre-internet was great :)

Laura (EuropeCrazy) said...

Did you ever read the teletext pages on the Paramount channel? Their Mailbox was brill back in the day!

And yes you can still get the good old holiday pages on Teletext, one of my pals at work is just back from a holiday that she booked on there.

Aah yes, the old Ceefax at 3am. Nice change from those boring through the night quiz-call thingies.

Progress is fine I guess, (and of course I love the internet) but not when the likes of Teletext gets shut down :((