Teletext license revoked because they dropped their news and local pages. I don't think I've actually used Teletext or Ceefax in over 10 years. Wonder if they'll bother replacing it with something else or just let it die.

Given it's getting less and less important as regions switch to digital I'm not shedding a tear. They've walked away from their PSB commitments so they should lose their licence. If only they could do the same with ITV who are guilty of exactly the same thing.

Why does that article mention that teletext has only been going for 17 years? I remember seeing teletext buttons on TV's in the 80's and reading about it as early as 1989, knowing that it had been around since the 70's.

Is the commercial entity who just had licensing revoked called "Teletext" the same as the generic term "teletext?"

I'm also not sure who those jealous North Americans were in the year 2000, since everyone I know was already getting travel deals on the net since 1996/1997.

Is everyone going to have to send in their remote controls to have the four coloured buttons removed now? What will they do with all the little rubber nibs they rip off the remotes?

No, and in that no lies the answer to your first question, too. Teletext Ltd are johnny-come-latelies, taking over the ITV teletext service from Oracle, who had been in the game since the 1970s. The BBC teletext service, called Ceefax, continues, as does the ITV subtitling ("closed caption") service, which in the UK is done using the teletext system.

Peter

In the UK broadcast terms 'Red button' services are used to describe interactive platforms like MHEG 5 or OpenTV. So the Fastext buttons (Red, Green, Yellow and Blue) remain in use for navigation purposes.

The only reason I sometimes use it is still it's main reason for existence I guess: the subtitling of programmes. Usually only meant for the hearing impaired, but also useful in situations where there's no sound available.

I've never used 'ITV Teletext' for anything other than Now and Next TV listings. However Ceefax pages 696 and 698 were always of use (BBC Jobs and Engineering Information respectively). In fact my first job with the corporation was found on Ceefax.

On a note related to "closed captioning"/subtitling and British TV. I find that I have to use it more for British programming than for regular programming. And it's not just because of the impenetrable Yorkshire accents. It seems that the sound guys on, not all, but a lot of, British TV, especially dramas from the 80s and 90s, spend a huge amount of time on closely miking the actors' hobnail court shoes, clothing apparently made of dried leaves, and the interiors of their lungs, at which point they realize that they've run out of mikes for the actors' voices, and decide that they'll just pick that up on the overrun on the other mikes.

It's not just me; many other people I know have the same complaint. Is it some sort of weird transcoding error, or is it this way in the original recordings?

Can't say I've witnessed it on such a massive scale myself.

Spot on, I agree completely! I've found this too a lot of times. In all cases, Teletext was a great help to me.

It sounds more like overzealous foley artists since historically location and studio recordings would/should be 'dry' on the basis that it's easier to add things in rather than take them out.

I wonder if Lionheart remixed the audio for export for some reason.

Hmmm, difficult to say. 80's/early 90's puts us in the fledgling stereo TV era in the UK. NICAM wasn't commonplace in the UK until the early 90's and some shows took even longer to move to stereo. So maybe some element of 'remixing' took place.

Yorkshire calling....!!!
Are they transmitting Emmerdale in the US? A feature of Yorkshire TV productions is that the studios were unwisely constructed with wooden floors, the creaking of which is a feature that has hampered producers of programmes like Frost and Rising Damp, as well.
Not that they didn't have enough trouble with electricians!
I'm told that the Yorkshire accent is as near as you get to the way English was spoken by Shakespeare.

Not to my knowledge.

There are basically three outlets for British programming in the US:

BBC America, which is a "basic cable" channel, which means that it's not broadcast on the airwaves, but virtually anyone who pays for TV will get it. They don't tend to show the massive soap operas like Emmerdale or Eastenders, though they will show the more regularly produced soap-opera-like series, like, uh, Footballers' Wives and, uh, Monarch of the Glen. They also usually stick with relatively recent stuff. BBC America is apparently related to the actual BBC only in name (which I assume they license), and, as such, they will also show ITV and other non-BBC shows. It's been running for about ten years now.

PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, is a private organization funded by donations and private and government grants. It airs no commercials. (Well, they do often have short pre- and post-show bumps from corporate sponsors of that particular show, if there are any.) PBS has imported British shows for a long time, at least since the early 80s, and probably before, some as part of the networked programming, where it is generally presented as part of an anthology series (like Masterpiece Theater or Mystery!), and some as, for lack of a better word, filler for the local stations. This is probably where most Americans saw Doctor Who. I know when I was growing up, my local station would show four episodes of Tom Baker on Saturday afternoon, two episodes of Peter Davison on Sunday afternoon, and a single episode of Jon Pertwee late weeknights. Okay, I'm getting off track. They would also show a lot of Eastenders. And I'm peripherally familiar with Emmerdale, so they must have shown it some time. But Yorkshire-wise, they definitely showed All Creatures Great and Small (speaking of Peter Davison). My local station still shows a decent amount of old sitcoms. Did they make an endless supply of Are You Being Served?

The third place used to be the basic cable A&E (Arts and Entertainment) channel. When it started, it was kind of an outlet for high-brow entertainment. (It also shared a channel with Nickelodeon, running from like 7pm to 7am.) In recent years, though, it has become an outlet for reality shows, like almost every other basic cable channel with a budget. Now that role has been taken over by a variety of other basic cable channels. My wife is watching Poirot, Sea of Souls, As Time Goes By, etc. on various channels.

There's been some great comedy on both sides of the pond, but personally, I don't rate "Are you being served" (which, as you rightly point out, seemed to go on for an eternity(10 series 69 episodes Wikipaedia tells me)) amongst it, nor IMO "The Office".
Some years ago the BBC did a complete run of Sergeant Bilko, The Phil Silvers Show, and I wish they would do it again: I've got a "best of", but the trouble with "best of's", is that they are not necessarily your personal best: It didn't include the one where they make a Renault Dauphin out of jeep parts.
I did buy a complete set on DVD's, which I found on a US site by googling, but when they turned up, they were bad transcriptions from the Comedy Channel, complete with commercial breaks,some unwatchable, presumably transcribed from old VHS's. Fortunately they were cheap, but what a rip off!
I know I'm getting old, but I love watching Dad's Army: I don't know whether anybody ever tried that on America, the meaning might well be a little obscure.