It was done. Teletext delivered news, sports results, horoscopes, closed captions, all directly to your TV in real-time. It was quite clever as a pre-internet method to deliver text content to every home.
All the people in the comments here being unaware of this makes me feel old.
It was not a thing in the places I grew up in. But when I saw it working during a European visit, it blew my mind. That was 20 years ago.
I don’t know how it is in other countries, but at least here in Germany teletext is still a thing and works on all the larger channels.
Teletext is a fun art form. Too bad the graphics are only really used for tarot and phone sex ads.
Anyway, here are some of my recreations of Czech cartoon characters using the online editor at edit.tf:
I have more but I am rate limited. Imgur album
The current generation doesn’t even know what a VHS is. I’m sorry, time comes for us all.
You know what a cassette is. I don’t need to call it a cassette tape do I?
Some places didn’t have that.
Like places in Asia jumped from radio to cable tv to mobile phones, skipping intermediate technologies like tv with only one or two channels, computers etc
That surprises me. Many parts of Asia have a big gambling scene; one of the main uses of Teletext was horse/dog racing odds in real time.
I think they might have been gambling with cards or lottery when teletext was a thing in Europe.
That was the thing in India at least.
I remember this, but I think it was only one local channel here. It would show community events, snow plow schedules, and things like that.
Or was that something else?