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
Teletext systems provided by Kentucky Educational Television and carried on KET's stations, both services providing agriculturally oriented information) and major-market U.S. TV stations (such as "Metrotext", which was formerly carried on station KTTV in Los Angeles, and "KeyFax", formerly on WFLD in Chicago). Perhaps the most prominent of American teletext providers was the "Electra" teletext service, using WST, which was broadcast starting in the early 1980s on the vertical blanking interval (VBI) of the American cable channel WTBS. Electra was owned and operated by Taft Broadcasting and Satellite Syndicated Systems (SSS). Electra ran up until 1993, when it was shut down due