News of the week in plain Finnish | Saturday 10.10.2026

Yle Teletext TV celebrated its 45th anniversary

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Yle Text-TV turned 45 this week.

Yle took its model from the British public broadcasting company BBC. The BBC introduced teletext in 1974. The invention came to Finland on October 7, 1981.

Yle Teletext turned 45 years old

The image shows a compilation of Teletext pages.

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Yle Teletext currently has 1,600 pages. Initially, there were only 80 pages. Photo: Yle / Derrick Frilund / Yle

Yle Text-TV was a major innovation in information dissemination in Finland.

The 45-year-old Teletext service works reliably without major technical requirements. It can be browsed directly on the TV, on Yle’s website or via mobile applications.

In addition to the homepage, the most used pages are news, sports, weather and betting.

For the hearing impaired and all of us

Teletext editor in Olympic high. Elina Alanen subtitling the August 1984 Kisastudio broadcast.

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Teletext editor in the throes of the Olympics. Elina Alanen subtitling the August Kisastudio broadcast in 1984. Photo: Yle/Håkan Sandblom

Yle Text-TV’s primary target audience was the hundreds of thousands of hearing-impaired people in Finland.

The first experiment was carried out at the 1983 World Athletics Championships. The results were shown simultaneously on the stadium scoreboard and on the TV screen.

In 1991, Teletext began broadcasting 24 hours a day.

Since 1996, the pages have also been online.

Teletext is also surprising

Editor Ulla Malminen tests Yle’s teletext bright light page.

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Yle’s teletext has a completely white page that brings light to the darkness of autumn. It’s on page 579. Photo: Petteri Sopanen / Yle

There’s also something fun about teletext.

The audience wanted a page that was like a white, bright light bulb. The white box is on page 579.

Later, some of the audience requested a warmer light. The yellow box was made on page 572.

Text-TV editor Matti Rämö added a black dot to these pages. Rämö thinks it’s like a meditation tool that you can use to focus your thoughts.

Sometimes Rämö changes the position of the point.

Matti Rämö, a teletext editor at his desk.

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Journalist Matti Rämö has been working on Teletext for over 20 years. Photo: Ilkka Kilpeläinen / Yle

Fan mail for Teletext

Teksti-tv logo YLE

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Teletext still has many friends. Photo: Teletext logo YLE

Yle Text-TV immediately became a popular favorite. It still has nearly 600,000 users every day.

Let’s end with a quote from the audience:

“I still watch the news on Teletext every morning. Although I watch it on the website version on my smartphone.”

It contains a concise summary of the most important news to read in the morning.

There is nothing similar on other services, you have to browse a lot more.”

Repetition

Teletext TV front page.

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Teletext lets you find the most important things quickly and easily.

Let’s say it again.

Yle Teletext turned 45 this week. Teletext still has over a million users per week.

Here was the News of the Week in plain Finnish. See you again, bye!