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
BBC West Midlands BBC West Midlands BBC Midlands is the BBC English Region producing local television, radio, web and teletext content for Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, the West Midlands, Worcestershire and northern Gloucestershire. Although the region has been unofficially called BBC West Midlands since BBC East Midlands became a separate region in 1991, it retains the BBC Midlands name and brand, with its history dating from 1927, for public use. The BBC Midlands region carries a number of regional programmes today. The regular schedule consists of the flagship "Midlands Today" news programme, regional news bulletins, the weekly regional magazine programme "Inside Out" and