NRK[1] will discontinue its teletext service on August 20 due to the risk of serious technical issues. Over the course of the past few years, the service has become increasingly difficult for NRK to maintain. The technology is old and very demanding to keep in working order with the rest of NRK’s system.
—“Most people are surprised when they find out that teletext still exists. But we know there are still some people who use it to this day,” says Audun Aas, product development manager for nrk.no.
Aas says that NRK is doing its best to help teletext users find the information they’re used to receiving through the service, elsewhere.
NRK’s teletext service celebrated its 40th anniversary two years ago. During the service’s 30th anniversary, it was predicted not to last another decade.
Did you know?
- Black and white TV sets were still common in 1983. NRK had a monopoly on TV broadcasts, but no way to provide quick updates on news and other information.
- Teletext was initially only available for a few hours in the evening, namely from the children’s programming block to the end of broadcasts before midnight.
- Because the terminals NRK used to type teletext were imported from England, the letters Æ and Ø had to be replaced with Ä and Ö in teletext respectively.
- A typo in a teletext warning about toxins in blue mussels caused many Norwegians to fall ill in the summer of 1994.
- The invitation to the NRK teletext editorial staff’s 10 year anniversary — including the event’s bill of fare — was accidentally shown on teletext, prompting an apology via Dagbladet[2].
- Teletext was for many years most popular among 20-39 year olds.
42 years of teletext
The Norwegian parliament resolved in April of 1982 that NRK would establish a teletext service. The service launched on February 2, 1983.
Establishing a teletext service proved to be such a daunting task that the chief editor of Arbeiderbladet[3] was brought on to lead the work.
Surveys show that use of teletext has gradually declined in recent years, with only 3% of Norway’s population using teletext as of 2024.
On August 20, 2025, the service will end after 42 years.
Poll: Will you miss teletext?
- Yes, I like having it available as an option: 29%
- No, I won’t miss it: 40%
- Yes, but only due to nostalgia: 31%
3,566 votes
NB: This poll is not representative of the entire country. These are only the votes of people who read this article and decided to vote.
[There’s a video from 1979 attached here explaining what teletext is, but I don’t feel like translating it right now. The key takeaway is maybe that NRK was already experimenting with teletext by that point, but hadn’t officially launched their service yet.]
All information currently available on teletext is also available on nrk.no.
Teletekst is still really popular in The Netherlands but people mostly use the app on their phone. It’s the 4th popular news app in The Netherlands. I suspect it’s because the format forces every news item to be very short.
3% of the whole country used teletext?? That sounds high enough to support for what it costs. How in the hell did they get 3% of the entire country to use teletext in the mid 2020s
How in the hell did they get 3% of the entire country to use teletext in the mid 2020s
Honestly, show anyone a website that provides the same info they were looking for on teletext. That’d persuade me never to switch, at least.
Zamn, I remember my parents would switch to text-tv back when I was real young, the last time I saw it was at my grandparents in the evening a few years ago. It sure was a neat idea, being able to view info as long as you wanted, without needing to follow the schedule for the live broadcast of the news and such. Now with the internet and more advanced TVs capable of recording and pausing any program, its become a real relic. Also, 5 year old me need no longer wonder, finally getting an answer as to why it wrote Ä and Ö instead of Æ and Ø, the damn thing was made in England!
Teletext / Ceefax was the coolest, honestly the best thing I remember about owning a TV
My grandpa used teletext to look at sports scores because he didn’t have a computer. Nowadays it’s pretty obsolete, but the ~aesthetic~ is great, there’s even a game called Teletext that imitates the graphic style.
