MediaCorp Teletext was a

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

information service provided by

MediaCorp Mediacorp Pte. Ltd., doing business as Mediacorp and stylised as mediacorp, is a media conglomerate in Singapore. Owned by Temasek Holdings—the holding company of the Government of Singapore—it owns television, radio, and digital media prope ...

. It was carried on MediaCorp's Channel 5, Channel 8 and

Channel NewsAsia CNA (stylised as cna), which is an acronym derived from its previous name, Channel NewsAsia, is a Singaporean multinational news channel owned by the country's national public broadcaster Mediacorp. It broadcasts free-to-air domestically in Sin ...

. On top of the standard information carried by most teletext providers, it also carried information unique to Singapore, such as COE and ERP rates, announcements from selected ministries in Singapore and lottery results. The service was also accessible over the Internet since 1999 until its shutdown in 2013.

History

The Singapore Broadcasting Corporation was studying the feasilbility of a teletext service as early as November 1982. Tenders were given to thirty television sets capable to receive such signals By January, SBC was aiming at a possible 1 May launch date. Studies were conducted in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

by SBC's news director Lim Kim Tian and since the inception of teletext services in the UK, the corporation (at the time RTS) was monitoring the growth of such services there. With Singapore using equipment similar to Europe, the teletext service was going to be similar to the ones deployed there, but with minor technical adjustments, the most notable being faster access (two to four times). By February, it was now scheduled for "June or July" and was set to be the first of its kind in Asia. British company

Logica Logica plc was a multinational IT and management consultancy company headquartered in London and later Reading, United Kingdom. Founded in 1969, the company had offices in London and in a number of major cities across England, Wales and Scot ...

provided the equipment, while the SBC Text staff were trained by Ceefax executive Graham Clayton for two weeks in May 1983. The first television sets equipped with teletext were to be put on sale in April. By mid-March, SBC Text was conducting test transmissions. It was used on both channels 5 and 8 from 7am to 11pm, with 100 sets of pages each, in the 100-199 range. The definitive launch date for the service, 1 August 1983, was announced on 5 June. Technical concerns were raised, especially in the CBD area, of ghosting issues. On 17 June, SBCText began its trial run, from 3pm to 9pm. On 1 August 1983, the service launched. The new service saw mixed reactions, with Oskar von Kretschmann having a favourable viewpoint, following the introduction of the service at the Hilton International Hotel, but bankers and stock brokers saw a negative review, as the service was catering more to "the home market" and that the information was a few hours out-of-date. By September, further complaints had included lack of instant information in general (compared to similar services in Hong Kong) and limited financial information, but other services were praised. Some hotels didn't adopt the system upon its launch due to financial constraints. Due to "popular demand from businessmen", SBC announced that the service would start an hour earlier (at 6am) effective 1 February 1984. By October 1984, SBC announced plans to expand the service, whose user base has risen from 3,000 at the time of launch the previous year to 25,000. Still, this represented 5% of television sets in Singapore. The number of pages has increased from 100 to 300, enhancing information in certain sections. The bus guide was removed in 1986 due to limited usage. The service was renamed INtv on 18 January 1993. It was later expanded to Channel News Asia when the channel was launched on 1 March 1999. Teletext Classifieds was shut down on 1 September 2012. On 3 September 2013, MediaCorp announced that the service will be discontinued from 30th of that month due to “declining usage”.

Content

Teletext was provided on three MediaCorp channels, with each channel specialising in specific types of information. Teletext on Channel 5 specialised in entertainment and lifestyle information, Classifieds on Channel 8 and business information on Channel News Asia.

Teletext Online

When the service was still online, the Teletext versions of all three channels were available for browsing via the Internet and features a nearly up-to-date version of the Teletext shown on television (delays might be up to 10 minutes). As with the Teletext on television, this service is now discontinued.

References

External links

Teletext Online
Teletext

Teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

1983 establishments in Singapore 2013 disestablishments in Singapore {{Asia-tv-stub