Electra (teletext) VBI (WTBS was in turn owned by Turner Broadcasting System, which would purchase the Hanna-Barbera animation studio, and most shows from sister company Ruby-Spears, from Taft successor Great American Broadcasting in 1991; Turner is now part of Time Warner). Electra was America's answer to the British Ceefax or ORACLE systems, providing news headlines, weather, entertainment/lifestyle info, and other information. Electra used the World System Teletext (WST) protocol, the same protocol used by Ceefax and ORACLE, as well as by other teletext services in the rest of the European continent. Electra was one of the very few American teletext services in
World System Teletext World System Teletext World System Teletext (or WST) is the name of a standard for encoding and displaying teletext information, which is used as the standard for teletext throughout Europe today. WST originally stems from the UK standard developed by the BBC and the UK Independent Broadcasting Authority in 1974 for teletext transmission, extended in 1976 as the Broadcast Teletext Specification. With some tweaks to allow for alternative national character sets, and adaptations to the NTSC 525-line system as necessary, this was then promoted internationally as "World System Teletext". It was accepted by CCIR in 1986 under international standard CCIR