| Ceefax | |
|---|---|
Pages from Ceefax title card |
|
| Format | Teletext |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| Production company(s) | BBC |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC analogue (via "Text" button), BBC Two overnight |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Original run | September 23, 1974 – present |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Oracle (1974-1992), Teletext Ltd. (1993-) |
Ceefax (phonetic for "See Facts") is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, started in 1974 and will run until April 2012 for Pages from Ceefax, while the actual interactive service will run until 24 October 2012, in-line with the digital switchover.[1][2]
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During the late 60s, engineer Geoff Larkby and technician Barry Pyatt were working at the Designs Department (Television Group) of the BBC on a text transmission system. Its object was to transmit a printable page of newsprint during the nocturnal "close-down" period of normal television transmission. The then Director General of the BBC, Sir Hugh Carleton Green, was interested in making farming and stock-market prices available as hard copy via the dormant TV transmitters. The remit received by BBC Designs Department was "the equivalent of one page of The Times newspaper to be transmitted during shut-down".
The first system employed a modified Muirhead drum facsimile transmitter, and hard-copy printer using pressure-sensitive "till-roll" paper passing over a drum with a raised helix of steel wire. This drum was synchronised with the transmission drum by means of the "frame" pulse inherent in the Muirhead system. Printing was effected by a hardened steel blade driven initially by loudspeaker moving coil, then by a printed-circuit coil, and finally by a special ceramic piezo element from Brush-Clevite. The combination of rotating helix and linearly moving blade, with the moving till-roll between them, enabled a raster to be drawn on the paper, without the smoke and smell of the Muirhead "sparking" system.
This early electro-mechanical system was called BEEBFAX - "Beeb" was the popular name for the BBC, and "fax" from the facsimile machine. Initial tests were conducted by sending scans of Christmas Cards over the internal telephone system.
The system was less than popular in the Designs Department laboratory, due to the clatter of the Muirhead facsimile, and the whining of the printer ... the project was shelved. Barry Pyatt, who had designed the innovative receiving and decoding electronics, went on to propose several improvements using the then emergent integrated circuit digital technology, but the project died. Geoff Larkby retired, and Barry Pyatt left the employ of the Corporation.
The idea was later taken up once again, this time in digital and on-screen form, under the new name of CEEFAX, (BBC-FAX)
The system was announced in October 1972 and following test transmissions in 1973-74 the Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974 with thirty pages of information. Developed by BBC engineers who were working on ways of providing televisual subtitles for the deaf, it was the first teletext system in the world. The then-BBC Director of Engineering James Redmond was a particular enthusiast. Other broadcasters soon took up the idea, including the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), who had developed the incompatible ORACLE teletext system, at around the same time. After technical negotiations, the two broadcasters settled in 1976 on a single standard, different from both Ceefax and Oracle, which ultimately developed into World System Teletext, and which in 2010 is still in use for analogue broadcasts. The display format of 24 rows by 40 columns of characters was also adopted for the Prestel system.
The technology became the standard European teletext system and replaced other standards, including the Antiope system formerly used in France.
In 1983, Ceefax started to broadcast computer programs, known as telesoftware, for the BBC Micro (a home computer available in the United Kingdom). The telesoftware broadcasts stopped in 1989. A similar idea was the French C Plus Direct satellite channel which used different, higher speed technology to broadcast PC software.
The basic technology of Ceefax has remained compatible with the 1976 unified rollout; system elaborations since then have been made such that earlier receivers are still able to do a basic decode of pages, but will simply ignore enhanced information rather than showing corrupted data. For example, early receivers cannot process the FasText coloured-button hyperlinking data, but are able to ignore it.
As of 2011[update], the BBC's Ceefax service is still providing information on a wide range of topics covering News, Sport, Weather, TV Listings and Businesses. The pages are still kept up-to-date. However, Ceefax is only available in areas where digital switchover has not talen place. The in-vision service 'Pages from Ceefax' is still transmitted overnight on most until 06:00 on BBC Two.
Before the world wide web become popular, Ceefax pages were often the first location to report a breaking story or headline.
In 2002, the BBC stopped broadcasting Ceefax on the digital satellite Sky Digital service, but later brought back a limited service including a TV schedule for BBC One and BBC Two; and subtitles.
The BBC has attempted to reuse the old Ceefax page numbers where possible on the Freeview and digital satellite BBC Red Button Ceefax-replacement services.[3]
It has been announced that Ceefax will not be replaced when the analogue signal is switched off in October 2012.[1][2] The BBC Red Button service is seen as an alternative to Ceefax and since 2007[4] the number of regions with a Ceefax supported analogue signal has declined as digital switchover has progressed across the UK. As of the end of 2011 three quarters of the UK TV regions have completed or in the process of being switched over.[5]
Ceefax is the last remaining text service available via analogue TV transmissions in the UK, as ITV and Channel 4's Teletext service closed in December 2009. Channel 5's "five text" ancillary service closed in 2011. However, a limited analogue teletext service through ITV and Channel 4 is still available through terrestrial.
The Ceefax/ORACLE standard was internationalised in the 1980s as World System Teletext, which was adopted into the international standard CCIR 653 (now ITU-R BT.653) of 1986 as CCIR Teletext System B. As with other teletext systems, text and simple graphics are transmitted in-band with the picture signal, and decoded by controller circuitry.
Those without access to teletext-equipped sets or in areas still receiving analogue transmissions can still view limited Ceefax content via the BBC's Pages from Ceefax slot. This consists of selected Ceefax pages (typically news) transmitted as an ordinary TV picture. As a result, although Pages from Ceefax can be viewed on any set, the interactive nature of the service is lost. Audio accompaniment typically consists of stock music or sometimes a discontinuous tone.
Pages from Ceefax is normally only shown in the absence of any other programming and the very first broadcasts took place in March 1980, generally lasting for around 30 minutes. They were shown on weekdays on BBC1 between 8.30am and 9am (although the 9am cut-off was later extended until the first programme of the day if programmes began shortly after 9am) and on BBC2 between 10am and 10.30am and 3.30pm to 4pm.[6]
In May 1983 the BBC decided to fill all daytime gaps with Ceefax transmissions and they became a common filler during daytime. It was not uncommon for some weekday transmissions on BBC2 at certain times of the year in the mid 1980s, mostly during the summer, to run continuously from 9am until around 5.30pm. Since then broadcasts have been marginalised by the move towards a near-continuous service, firstly on BBC1 when a daytime service was launched on 27 October 1986 although all morning Ceefax broadcasts continued on BBC2 when Daytime on Two was not on the air until June 1989. Throughout the 1990s Ceefax broadcasts were restricted to 15 to 30-minute long breakfast transmissions before the first programme of the day. However in recent years, especially at the weekend, slightly longer slots have been broadcast during the early morning on BBC2 because BBC2 now stays on air all night. The "Pages from Ceefax" billing was first used in January 1984, which was when Radio Times first made reference to daytime Ceefax broadcasts. Prior to that, it was billed on-air as Ceefax in Vision.
In February 1983, a few weeks after Breakfast Time was launched, BBC1 started broadcasting an early morning Ceefax transmission called "Ceefax AM". The weekday broadcast ran from 6am until the start of Breakfast Time at 6.30am. The sequence of pages differed to those shown during daytime transmissions. Ceefax AM always featured a review of the day's newspapers as well as a financial report plus Ceefax AM did not initially include BBC TV listings. Also, the famous 'Teletext Is' pages were never shown on Ceefax AM. The Radio Times gave Ceefax AM a more prominent billing than it ever gave to the daytime Pages From Ceefax broadcasts, including a description sentence which read "Ceefax AM starts your day with half-an-hour of news, sport, weather and travel available to all viewers, whether or not they have teletext sets". To underline the importance of Ceefax AM as part of BBC1's new breakfast service, Ceefax AM was mentioned in a promo for Breakfast Time.[7] For nine days in August 1984, during the second half of the 1984 Olympic Games, Ceefax AM was renamed Ceefax Olympics AM. Shown as an overnight filler, the programme lasted for two to three hours, running between the end of the live overnight coverage and the start of Breakfast Time. During this period, the programme was also broadcast at the weekend, the only time that Ceefax AM ever appeared at the weekend. The transmissions were focussed on a round-up of the latest news from the Olympic Games as well as the usual service of news, weather and travel. On 18 February 1985, Breakfast Time was moved to a later 6.50 to 9.20am slot and Ceefax AM's transmission time was extended from 30 minutes to 50 minutes. However, the November 1986 revamp of Breakfast Time saw Ceefax AM's slot reduced to around 40 minutes as BBC1 broadcast an American programme, usually Leon Errol or Edgar Kennedy, before the start of Breakfast Time. Ceefax AM's final transmission was on 15 September 1989, the Friday before the planned relaunch of Breakfast Time as BBC Breakfast News. The pre-breakfast Ceefax slot returned in January 1990 but was referred to in Radio Times as Pages from Ceefax and the pages featured were the same as for all other Ceefax transmissions.
In the 1980s, the selection of pages covered a wide range of topics. News, sport, weather, BBC TV listings and from the mid 1980s, the "Teletext Is" sequence, were always part of Pages From Ceefax. In addition, other topics such as the day's featured recipe, news from the BBC, BBC radio listings, financial news, travel news and reviews of the films being showed on the BBC that day, appeared on an ad-hoc basis. The complete basic cycle of news, sport, weather, TV listings and 'Teletext Is' was around 30 pages but when other topics were included, the cycle could run to 50 pages or more. In late 1989 the Ceefax service was revamped and the pages featured on the in-vision slots since then have all been news-based. The November 1996 refresh of the Ceefax service resulted in a significant reduction of the overall number of pages broadcast on the in-vision service with around 20 pages featured. This limited set of rolling pages shown on Pages from Ceefax (referred to as a "newsreel") remains accessible at any time of day via Ceefax page 152 (BBC Two only) on any analogue teletext television.
In a similar manner, Channel 4 also showed pages from Oracle and 4-Tel On View until 1997.. The pages were first seen in mid 1983 and were broadcast in fifteen minute bursts, alternating with the test card, during daytime before the first programme of the day. Oracle On View was last broadcast in March 1989 but 4-Tel On View continued until 1997, ceasing when Channel 4 began broadcasting around the clock.
On ITV, teletext broadcasts were used to show local job vacancies. The first region to do this was Central Television, launching the service in April 1986. The pages were broadcast for an hour after closedown, extending to three hours the following year when Central extended its broadcast hours. Using the downtime for Jobfinder provided Central with a 24-hour service before the station launched a proper overnight service in early 1988. Yorkshire Television was the second region to launch a Jobfinder service, doing so in January 1987. Like Central, YTV broadcast the service for one hour after closedown. By autumn 1988 24-hour broadcasting had begun across all of the ITV network and many regions broadcast a Jobfinder service as part of their overnight schedule, showing the programme in the hour before the ITN Morning News. However, during the first half of the 1990s Jobfinder slowly disappeared from ITV with Yorkshire and Central being the final regions to end the service in the mid 1990s.
The last BBC One network broadcast took place on 9 November 1997, although it is still occasionally shown on BBC One Scotland, normally to fill the gaps between opt-outs and The Sign Zone. As of 2011, during school term time, BBC Two often broadcasts language shows instead of Ceefax during the week and the BBC News is usually shown on BBC Two in the late night/early morning gaps in schedules until BBC Learning Zone begins and/or BBC1 hands over to BBC News both usually at around 4am. During weekends and the school holidays "Pages from Ceefax" can be enjoyed for several hours, usually starting around 3am and continuing until 6am.
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