Tuesday 26 November 2019

BBC to end Red Button service is a disgrace.

I am avid reader of the BBC Red Button since the days of Ceefax  and are very disappointed that it is to  switch off the news and sport text services on the TV red button early next year.
The decision spells the end of reading headlines, football scores, weather, travel news and more on TV sets, 45 years after the launch of Ceefax.
Red button text launched in 1999, taking over as Ceefax was phased out.
TVs will still be able to access other red button services, like picking a stage to watch at Glastonbury or a court to watch at Wimbledon.
"From early 2020, viewers will no longer be able to access text-based BBC News and BBC Sport content by pressing red," a BBC spokesperson said.
"It's always a difficult decision to reduce services, and we don't take decisions like this lightly, but we have taken it because we have to balance the resources needed to maintain and develop this service with the need to update our systems to give people even better internet-based services.
"Viewers can still access this information on the BBC website, BBC News and Sport mobile apps - as well as 24-hour news on the BBC News Channel."

It's not the bloody same though I can switch on my TV and look up what I want immediately  and although I have a desktop and a tablet it is not as easy and if I want to see how a team I support did , then I don't have to plough through different pages to get it.


It is simple to use easily available and not dependent  on a internet access 


Indeed if I want  straight news free from journalist bias, i sometimes find the information I need that prompts me to dig deeper.

I



Once again those who do not have access to the internet from their living rooms are immediately at a disadvantage .


Rather ending the Red button it should have been handed to an Independent service and made more easily available.


What should have happened  is that the 5 biggest terrestrial channels should have got together and made the red button available on all their channels.



Once again we seem to have a decision made by those who because they have no problem with getting information from their Lap Top, Tablet or Mobile Phone eveyone can.


I can't help thinking that this has been made so that politicians who may have raised  this issue have other things on their mind.





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