I am wearing my black armband today because I am in mourning. Why? Don’t worry, no-one has died. For five years, between 1995 and 2000, I worked for a company called Intelfax who specialised in teletext. For those of you outside the UK, teletext is a means of transmitting data via a TV set – you could almost call it a non-linear, non-interactive version of the Internet (but not as pretty).
Anyway, I used to look after the regional teletext services for a couple of regional TV stations and this was a daily, thankless job of making sure TV listings were correct and writing synopses of TV programmes. When it was busy, it was hard work because teletext is meant to be instantaneous and when a TV host says “And for more details, check out teletext page 6xx” the information had to be there for people to access.
Anyway, I digress. Last night, for the first time in about 9 months, I checked the regional teletext service to see what films were on TV and it wasn’t there. There was just a message to say it had been discontinued. 🙁
So that’s why I am in mourning.
For an irreverent peek at what I used to do, check out this website.
I used to look after the Carlton, LWT and GMTV services…and the mistakes lampooned were all done when I was on holiday, honest! 🙂 It’s good because even though the services are gone, my work and page designs (yes, I did the little graphics and logos on those pages) still live on in cyberspace. Hurrah!