BBC to switch-off red button teletext

THE BBC is to axe its red button teletext service, the last remnant of the old Ceefax, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

When Ceefax closed in 2012 as part of the digital switchover, its news, sport and weather stories continued to be accessible via the red button control.

But as most people access such information online, the service is becoming obsolete, and will disappear in January.

A leaked email from Dan Taylor-Watt, the BBC’s head of product for iPlayer and the Sounds app, reveals the plans.

He wrote: “The BBC’s Executive Committee has made the difficult decision to cease the text service side of Red Button from late January 2020 in view of the opportunity cost of the work that would have been required to maintain the service.”

Mr Taylor-Watt said viewers would be encouraged to view content on the website, mobile apps and the 24-hour BBC News channel instead.

The red button will remain as a means of viewing TV content – for example, viewing different stages at Glastonbury, or different matches from Wimbledon.

Mr Taylor-Watt said the BBC plans to “increasingly leverage this powerful mechanism for getting users from broadcast into iPlayer”.

The closure will end a teletext service that began as Ceefax in 1974. Years before the internet, it provided upto-the-minute news at the touch of a button. Saturday football results were among its most popular draws.

A BBC spokesman confirmed the closure of the service. He said: “It’s always a difficult decision to reduce services, and we don’t take decisions like this lightly.”