BBC teletext service, Ceefax, was introduced, created initially to provide subtitling, but developed into a news and information service. In 1978, BBC staff went on strike just before the Christmas of that year, thus blocking out the transmission of both channels and amalgamating all four radio stations into one. Since the deregulation of the UK television and radio market in the 1980s, the BBC has faced increased competition from the commercial sector (and from the advertiser-funded public service broadcaster Channel 4), especially on satellite television, cable television, and digital television services. In the late 1980s, the BBC began a process of
Electra (teletext) operation. A few other services were offered by some large-market TV stations in the US throughout the 1980s, such as "Metrotext" from KTTV in Los Angeles and "KeyFax" from WFLD in Chicago. Electra also carried another teletext service on its higher-numbered pages, a service called "Tempo". Tempo mainly carried sports (and other miscellaneous) information on its pages. At the time of Electra's closing in 1993, it was the only existing teletext service in the USA. Electra (teletext) Electra was a teletext service in the United States that was in operation from the early 1980s up until 1993, when it was