2. Ceefax
One of the biggest casualties of the digital switchover was the Ceefax service and Pages From Ceefax which were broadcasted on an analogue frequency. The service ran from 1974 - 2012 with the last pages being shut off in October in the BBC Northern Ireland region. How I sobbed! The development of Ceefax was announced in 1972 but it didn't go live until 1974. On its first broadcast, Ceefax had 30 pages of information. It was largely developed by engineers working on a subtitle service for the deaf and it was the first teletext service in the world. Others were quick to copy Ceefax - Teletext on ITV and Oracle (which was seriously cool) on Channel 4. Pages From Ceefax collated a number of Ceefax pages and broadcasted them on the television for filler material when there was no programming. This began in the early 1980s right up until the digital switchover. It mainly consisted of news and it lost the interactive nature of regular Ceefax. Accompanied by the greatest muzak known to man, by 2012 Pages From Ceefax was only shown in the wee small hours on BBC 2 at the weekends. It has been replaced by previews of BBC 2 programmes. This is not interesting to anyone and a gaping hole has been left in the BBC schedule. One that can never be replaced by the red button! Never!