12/20/2023 0 Comments Teletext net 5In less time than it took IBM to develop its PC, the short-lived Time Teletext operation deteriorated into less than its contingent parts. Between 19, Time Inc. spent $25 million on its teletext experiment, hoping to facilitate around-the-clock news headlines, as well as full-blown video games on TVs across the country. Teletext's potential to accelerate the flow of information proved to be widely seductive, if not ultimately unfulfilled. Teletext, according to those who worked with it, struck technologists and journalists alike as a diviner of the tech utopia to come.īy the early 80s, the BBC, CBS, PBS, NBC, and Time Inc., through its newly-acquired Home Box Office (HBO), had all put out feelers to TV manufacturers and broadcasters investigating teletext's viability as a commercial product-with Time's investment far exceeding its peers'. But in 1974, this user-to-information proximity was practically unfathomable, an anomaly seven years before IBM introduced its Personal Computer, the first computer of a size and price that was attractive for individual use. Absentminded Yelping and indifferent glances at New York Times push notifications may now be taken-for-granted byproducts of the digital revolution. Immediate access to stock quotes and international headlines was a sci-fi caprice that has today become a law of nature. Back then, when the average media consumer couldn't envision reading script on a screen, well-moneyed news services were exploring teletext as an ultramodern avenue for on-demand, 24/7 news delivery to living rooms across the globe. Teletext, an information service for transmitting text and graphics to a television set, was, 30 years ago, slated to revolutionize information retrieval. "Though Jones is not a real person," the AP story read, "his actions are not necessarily those of a science-fiction movie."Ĭlick to advance. From there, he peruses the weather report and some local headlines, all on his television monitor and from the comfort of his sofa. Jones picks a restaurant and soon routes back to teletext's main menu. Pushing the left and right buttons granted Jones access to restaurants' phone numbers, addresses, and coupons, which appeared on his screen in a dated, blocky neon type. In May 1979, the Associated Press ran an aspirational story titled "Teletext: Soon You'll Be Punching Buttons And Talking Back To Your TV." With unrestrained reverence, the journalist describes Bill Jones, an imaginary teletext user, navigating a list of Chinese restaurant menus on his TV monitor with a remote.
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