Media Week

Shock news yesterday that the plug will be pulled on the mighty Teletex service at the end of year.

Who would have thought having a news service broadcast in the shape of a screen full of text, the occasional block graphic and even different coloured fonts would ever look tired?

And this is a service in which consumers are in control. Simply type in the page number you wish to look at, wait a couple of minutes for the numbers to come around again, and er voila – the next page of text. Incredible.

Apparently the tough decision to stop broadcasting this prehistoric service was only made after “a comprehensive review of the business by the senior management”.

Teletext owner DMGT attributed poor financial performances, in part, to “the government’s meagre allocation of broadcast capacity for the public Teletext service in the 1996 Broadcating Act”.

Interesting. I would have thought the birth of the internet might have played its part in killing-off the near-static 15 year old text pages?

When Teletext launched in 1993 there were no 24 hour news channels, websites or free TV listings. Its mix of news, sport and weather, accompanied by TV schedules, quizzes and games was widely celebrated.

At its peak it attracted more than 20 million adults per week and was a highly lucrative multimillion pound business. That’s 20 million.

But in a new digital world, cheap holiday deals could only take it so far - in fact this service is being siphoned off and will still be available on Freeview.

Its version of rolling news is painfully out of step. The biggest loss come December will be the passing of Bamboozle.

News that Reuters, the long-established bastion of British news gathering, looks set to disappear from the London Stock Exchange passed without much comment last week, instead cold pragmatism was the order of the day.

The board of the now Thomson Reuters enterprise unanimously agreed that “unifying the company's capital structure is in the best interests of all shareholders”.

Simply put, by consolidating the company’s four listings to just two, the aim is to improve the take home for shareholders.

The shareholders vote on 7 August looks set to be a mere formality, resulting in Thomson Reuters remaining on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange but no longer part of the LSE or the Nasdaq.

It will signal another step away from Reuter’s strong British roots, which it has held for more than 150 years. Earlier this year, the company announced its official headquarters were now in the New York.

The HQ of the news giant used to be synonymous with Fleet Street, and was the last major news provider to severe its central London ties when it moved in June 2005.

But time marches on. Reuters has been expertly led by American Tom Glocer for almost eight years now, and following its “merger” (actually a buyout) with Canadian giant Thomson last year, UK shareholders (not too long ago 50%) constituted just 5% of its new combined base.

For one of the world’s best known and most respected global operations, which has operated out of London since 1851, there appears to be no discernable value left in being British.