Citing the "fragmentation of television audiences and the boom in online use for news" Mike Stewart, the group managing director of Teletext has announced that the popular news service will come to an end in January 2010.
Seeing its audience constantly eroded by a plethora of alternative online news sources, Teletext has been making a loss for the last three years. Teletext services are currently broadcast on the UK's free-to-air commercial channels - ITV, Channel 4 and Five.
The final nail in the Teletext coffin was the decision by TV industry regulator Ofcom, to withdraw its public service licence after 2014 - which would have resulted in Teletext having to pay for the signal that carried its text-based news service.
Many of us will have fond memories for a service that has been going in some form since 1974 as the ITV-run Oracle (replaced in 1993 by Teletext) and provided news, sport and weather information, as well as TV schedules. The BBC has run a similar service, Ceefax, since 1974.
Mike Stewart added: "We investigated and researched every means to keep the news service going, but in the end we couldn't find a viable option".
A spokesperson for the BBC said its analogue Ceefax service would be phased out with the digital switchover 2012. The Ceefax will disappear after 38 years, to be replaced by digital text services through the BBC's red button service.
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