Delving into the archives - how red button could have looked in 1998
Post categories: Inside BBC Red Button
| 09:15 UK time, Monday, 1 June 2009
A couple of years ago we moved offices, and as usually happens on such occasions, much time was spent clearing out cupboards and drawers that had, naturally, become full of stuff that everyone had forgotten about.
One cupboard contained folders and folders of meeting minutes from 1999. Another contained a draft continuity script for the launch of BBC Choice. Elsewhere we found a box of BBC Sport branded pencils.
My favourite find was a batch of A4 printouts which contained different brand name options for the service we now know as BBC Red Button.
As I wrote on my personal blog at the time, the names were a lovely mixture, and included BBC Text, BBC Text+, BBCi, Ceefax Digital and, my personal favourite, SuperCeefax.
Where those printouts are now, I don't know. Sat unloved in cupboard in our current office, probably.
I was reminded of them after coming across a set of archive files on one of our computer servers recently.
Amongst them were these mock ups made back in 1998 showing how the BBC's new digital text service could look.
It's clearly very much based on the design and layout used by Ceefax, as you can see from these pictures:
And as you can see, it's very different to what actually launched.
Completely menu based, page numbers weren't even added as an option until several years later.
It's also a lot less visually rich. The Ceefax style mock ups were rather optimistic in that they were very graphically rich - far more so than our available bandwidth and the early set top boxes would actually have been able to cope with.
The screenshots open a mirror into a different world. Into a world where BBC Red Button never existed, where people are being urged to press text, and where this blog has a name that mentions SuperCeefax.
Back in this world, and there's a chance to see how far so much has changed in the last eleven years. And with new developments like broadband connected TVs coming soon, red button services may be about to make an evolutionary step, or even a leap in a whole new direction.
Teletext Then and Now also has some screenshots of our early services, including the trial service launched in 1999. And if you see a box of BBC Sport pencils floating around, please let us know.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~11~RS~)
Comments
Sign in or register to comment.
"As I wrote on my personal blog at the time, the names were a lovely mixture, and included BBC Text, BBC Text+, BBCi, Ceefax Digital and, my personal favourite, SuperCeefax."
Any of them would have been better than "BBC Red Button", a singularly meaningless name to the colour-blind!... My favourite would be BBCi, and had the BBC not allowed the marketing people, with all their "Press RED" DOGs, been allowed free rain the BBC would have been at the forefront of such branding rather than playing catch-up...
Complain about this comment
Slightly off-topic but yes, completely agree with Boilerplated as regards the BBCi.
Is very interesting to see how there was such a complete all or nothing approach. I'd never even realised it took so long to re-introduce page numbers. Seems unthinkable in these linked data days... ;-)
Complain about this comment
BBCi - that's catchy. That could work.
Complain about this comment
This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Calling it the "Red Button" service when lots of TV remotes standby buttons are also red is the work of a genius.
Did anyone actually think about it just a little?
Complain about this comment
I just had a check of the six remotes on my desk (far too many I know).
Two had red buttons for standby. One had a grey button with a red power symbol. Another had a grey button with a turquoise ring round it. The final two had black buttons - one of which had a green power symbol on it.
The one thing all remotes have, of course, is the red button.
I confess I don't know the history of why the red button was chosen initially - it dates back many years, but it was chosen and our research does show that the majority of people do understand it.
Complain about this comment
View these comments in RSS