Come January 2010 everyone over the age of 25 will be lamenting over their favourite childhood text based news service, Teletext. Allegedly, the service has been making a loss for three years and "fragmentation of television audiences and the boom in online use for news" has been blamed for its demise. Hardly surprising, but a shame nonetheless.
I grew up with Teletext, from the retro ‘zx spectrum’ graphics which Peter Kay made infamous to the 21st century makeover. Despite each page taking an age to load, it was, in the early 90’s the only place you could get the latest music news without having to shell out for the NME. As times changed and video gaming became a multi billion socially acceptable industry instead of something only paedo’s and geeks did, new pages emerged.
I still read Teletext from time to time. For me at least, it is still an excellent news source for music and video gaming. It has championed indie bands and unsigned acts, even on the strength of reviewing band demos, got some acts signed to labels. On the strength of its reviews, the service has got me into so many of my favourite bands today. Its often amusing video game reviews offer the public a true opinion untainted by the greasing of palms in return for good reviews (like other video game review sources, Gamespot).
Seemingly independent and unbiased it is a shame that this service has been given its marching orders. Once relied upon by millions and now merely glanced at by the thousands it is truly embedded in British culture and just like other cultural icons, such as John Peels voice, we will miss it when its gone.
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