NRK Text TV

By Nina Bratland

In April 1982, the Storting decided that NRK, which at that time provided Norway's only television channel, should also offer Teletext to its subscribers. The country's first digital mass medium would soon create a wide range of services. In February 1983, they started with an editorial team of five: Olav Nilssen, manager, former editor of Arbeiderbladet, Grethe Holst, developer and information officer, Rolleiv Solholm, internationally oriented technician and journalist (took over as manager from 1986), Agnes Svalast and journalist, Sissel Norevik, journalist.

Teletext was the fastest media channel from the early 1980s. Newspapers delivered yesterday's news and TV was locked to fixed evening broadcasts. Even radio, with its diverse program, was tied to fixed broadcast times. Teletext could be updated continuously and edited pages were uploaded in a few minutes. All you needed was a TV set equipped with a decoder, and a remote control. With a few keystrokes, text pages could be retrieved and displayed instead of the TV picture, or superimposed transparently over the picture.

Simply put, Teletext is a system for broadcasting text and simple graphic elements, along with a television channel. The British BBC introduced the system in 1974, under the name Ceefax. Engineers developed the service by using free capacity on the television signal lines. Initially, the intention, for both the BBC and NRK, was to establish a service for people with limited hearing. From the very beginning, this target group was represented by their own association pages. But interest grew, and it quickly became clear that Teletext could engage many more people.

News updates, domestic and international, were the core content of NRK Text-TV, along with sports, games and weather forecasts. Many people used the regular updates in their work and everyday routines, such as calendars, flight departures, exchange rates, job advertisements, mussel alerts, etc. Children's pages, food recipes, film and book reviews also had loyal readers, which the editorial staff noticed through enthusiastic expressions in letters, emails and telephone calls. In Norway, it was initially only possible to use text-TV for a few hours in the evening, from children's TV at 6 pm until midnight. The short opening hours made users upset – a hint that there was room for something bigger.

Teletext graphics take the concept of low-resolution to new heights. Standards with finer graphics have been developed, but because this requires users to replace their television sets, it has not been popular. The style has simply become part of Teletext's identity. "We made all the graphics ourselves," Grethe Holst told nrk.no at the 20th anniversary. She got some good advice on style and color use from SVT Text at the start. They had been working for four years and could say with weight: "The art of limitation is important."

The writing tool is similar to regular word processing, but has many extra commands that need to be learned. Artists began to show particular interest in the simple Teletext graphics from around 2015. Racuel Meyers is one of several who use older digital platforms in her work. Described as a “KYBDslöjd,” she draws parallels from Teletext graphics to Brutalist architecture. “The text is unadorned and roughly hewn, like concrete.” And Meyers sees that Teletext and Brutalism have more in common than a rawness and an unpretentious honesty. “Both herald a new era. They should be useful and functional rather than refined and ornate.”

The responsibility for teletext currently lies with the NRK.no team and much of the material is automatically retrieved from the same systems that deliver content to the websites. When NRK Teletext ended its broadcasts on August 20, 2025, after 42 years, this was explained by the channel having struggled with technical errors and a lot of maintenance. It became increasingly difficult to get the old technology to work together with the other systems that are constantly being modernized.

The number of people who have Teletext as their information channel is difficult to measure precisely. But it can be stated that the closure is bad news for quite a few people. Inmates in Norwegian prisons are among these. NRK journalist Jakob Arvola did an interview at Teletext's 40th anniversary celebration, in 2023. It was about Maiken, who had just been released from prison. She talked about the situation as an inmate, where you lose access to the internet and the easily accessible news updates we have become accustomed to. When what is at your disposal is linear TV, radio and a few paper newspapers on sharing, Teletext wins. The channel is the best updated and, after all, the one that most resembles the platforms you otherwise use. In other words, round numbers indicate a peak in 2005 with 1.5 million daily readers of Teletext, in 2017 there were around 400,000. In 2025 there will still be around 280,000 people choosing this channel. The clear leader among users is people aged 65 and over. In addition, most of them live in Northern Norway.

Why do they still choose Teletext? The solution is cheap, easy to obtain and use and rarely subject to technical errors. It may be a good, stable solution in areas that lack broadband. It may also be that this group of 280,000 people have seen something significant, something similar to what Frank Rossavik highlights in a comment at the end: "NRK's ​​Teletext is excellent news reporting. The titles are short and informative. They tell what the matter is about. There is no "You won't believe what..." and other newfangled manipulation to drive up readership." "The texts are also short and at best contain only the core of the matter."