Social Media: The Death Of Teletext
Why people turned online to keep up to date with football
For modern football fans who are not at a game, you will likely catch them scrolling through social media reacting with fellow football fans as live updates filter through.
But how would people keep up to date with football before social media was around? Teletext is the answer.
Before the internet revolution, Teletext’s blocky text and 8-bit graphic television text news service reigned supreme as the interactive experience of choice in UK households.
Ceefax was the BBC on-screen text function that launched in 1974 and came to an end back in 2009, but why did it close and how did this change football journalism?
What was Teletext?
Teletext was a news and information service in the form of text and graphics, transmitted using the spare capacity of existing television channels to televisions with appropriate receivers.
The teletext decoder in the television buffered this information as a series of ‘pages’, each given a number.
The user could choose to display particular pages using their remote control, often operating with the four coloured buttons.
Football Coverage on Teletext
If you grew up in the 90’s, things were different for football fans.
Today’s football fan will not have experienced ‘watching’ a game on Teletext which was the place for football updates.
Ceefax excelled on matchdays with each division having its own page with live scores spread across 3 to 4 subpages that rotated every 30 seconds or so.
Fans eagerly awaited for their team’s match to cycle back around with the hope of seeing one of their player’s names appear under familiar blue text indicating that they had scored.
There was no other information available other than the score, goalscorers and red cards; you would have to wait until Match of the Day to get the full picture.
Away from matchdays, stories would be posted and often with hyperbolic headlines that were particularly tantalising when it came to transfer rumours.
The Arrival of Social Media
Time finally caught up with the news service when it closed in 2009 after becoming a victim of declining profits and the internet.
Karen Rankine, the Managing Director and Head of News and Programmes at ITV Channel Television said the closure was a commercial decision.
“Because it is a service that is funded entirely by a commercial advertising revenue, what’s been happening of course is that as people have migrated more and more to using the internet, it is no longer a viable business model.” — Karen Rankine.
Social media has ultimately changed the way football fans keep up to date with football and football journalism itself.
They no longer have to wait 30 seconds for their fixture to come back around on a page and can simply refresh their social media feeds in 1 second for instant updates.
Journalists can now provide updates of exactly what’s happening in 280 characters and have even more statistics to share; fans can now see more than just the score, goalscorers and red cards.
Fans can even engage directly with journalists to ask for clarity on stories or their opinions on transfer rumours, adding credibility and extending debates.
Teletext will always be remembered for being the ‘internet before the internet’ but it would never be able to stop the ever-growing beast that is social media.
