ORACLE (from "Optional Reception of Announcements by Coded Line Electronics") was a commercial
teletextTeletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
service first broadcast on
ITVITV is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters, set up under the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC. ITV is the oldest commercial television network in the UK...
in 1974 and later on
Channel 4Channel 4 is a UK public-service television broadcaster which began working on November 2, 1982. Although commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station owned now and operated by the Channel Four Television...
in the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, finally ending on both channels at 23:59 GMT on 31 December 1992.
It was developed and launched by a consortium backed by the
Independent Broadcasting AuthorityThe Independent Broadcasting Authority was the regulatory body in the United Kingdom for commercial television - and commercial/independent radio broadcasts...
at about the same time as the BBC's
CeefaxCeefax is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, starting in 1974 and running until 2012....
service. Due to the lack of available receivers, exact launch dates have been left obscure. Receivers became popular around 1980.
ORACLE moved away from being an experimental engineering department and more towards being a content provider. Under the original plans for the ITV franchise renewal, they were to have been scrapped at the end of 1992 and the few
scan linesThe vertical blanking interval , also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time difference between the last line of one frame or field of a raster display, and the beginning of the next. It is present in analog television, VGA, DVI and other signals. During the VBI the incoming data...
they used given to the highest bidder. ORACLE successfully campaigned for the creation of a franchise for the teletext service on ITV and Channel 4, only to find themselves outbid by
Teletext Ltd.Teletext Ltd is the provider of Teletext & Digital Interactive services for ITV, Channel 4 and Five in the United Kingdom.Teletext Ltd started providing teletext services for ITV and Channel 4 on 1 January 1993, replacing the previous ORACLE service which had lost the franchise...
, a consortium originally comprising
Associated NewspapersAssociated Newspapers is a large national newspaper publisher in the UK, which is a subsidiary of the Daily Mail and General Trust. The group was established in 1905 and is currently based at Northcliffe House in Kensington...
,
Philips ElectronicsKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , most commonly known as Philips, is a Dutch electronics company.Philips is one of the largest electronics companies in the world. In 2007, its sales were €26.79 billion...
and Media Ventures International, who started broadcasting at midnight on January 1, 1993.
ORACLE began to disappear at 23:31:09 on December 31,1992. It continued until 23:55:55 and it said
ORACLE Gone 1978-1992.
Because of the rivalry between the two companies, ORACLE did not carry television listings beyond its midnight closing time on New Years Eve 1992. It merely stated "00.00 The End of Oracle, Now the Nightmare Begins".
Even now Oracle is perhaps best remembered for its advertising slogan "Page The Oracle".
See also
- Park Avenue
Park Avenue was a daily teletext based soap opera on ITV's ORACLE Teletext service, which was written by Robbie Burns. It was launched in 1988, and 1,445 episodes were written during its time on air...
, a teletext based soap which appeared on ORACLE for several years
External links