Electra was a

teletext A British Ceefax football index page from October 2009, showing the three-digit page numbers for a variety of football news stories Teletext, or broadcast teletext, is a standard for displaying text and rudimentary graphics on suitably equipp ...

service in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

that was in operation from the early 1980s up until 1993, when it was shut down due to a lack of funding, and discontinuation of teletext-capable television sets by the only US television manufacturer offering teletext capability at the time,

Zenith The zenith (, ) is an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the celestial sphere. "Above" means in the vertical direction ( plumb line) opposite to the gravity direction at that location ( nadir). The zenith is the "high ...

. It was owned, operated and maintained by

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line w ...

-based

Taft Broadcasting The Taft Broadcasting Company (also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated) was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The company was rooted in the family of William Howard Taft, the 27th President of the Un ...

(specifically at their flagship station,

WKRC-TV WKRC-TV (channel 12) is a television station in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which provides certain services to MyNetworkTV affiliate WSTR-TV (channel 64) under a lo ...

, which had debuted the service in their area first) and

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

-based

Satellite Syndicated Systems Satellite Syndicated Systems, Inc. (SSS) was a company founded in 1978 as a division of Southern Satellite Systems, Inc., dedicated to the exploration and development of new satellite communication opportunities, especially for the then-new industry ...

(SSS), in cooperation with cable/satellite TV station Superstation WTBS (now TBS), who carried Electra's data on their

vertical blanking interval In a raster scan display, the vertical blanking interval (VBI), also known as the vertical interval or VBLANK, is the time between the end of the final visible line of a frame or field and the beginning of the first visible line of the next fra ...

. SSS's own TV network, the

Satellite Program Network Satellite Program Network (SPN) was a satellite and cable television network that broadcast in the United States from 1979 to 1989. Following a name change to Tempo Television in 1986, it was bought by NBC and relaunched as CNBC in 1989. Histo ...

(later renamed to Tempo Television), carried the service before it was shut down in 1989 (SSS/Tempo having sold their transponder space to

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

, who used it to launch

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk s ...

). The service was also available to C-band satellite dish users via the

Galaxy 1 Galaxy 1 was the first in a line of Galaxy communications satellites launched by Hughes Communications in 1983. It helped fill a hole in satellite broadcasting bandwidth created by the loss of RCA's Satcom 3 in 1979. Unlike satellite owners ...

and Satcom 3R satellites. Electra was America's answer to the

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

Ceefax Ceefax (, punning on "seeing facts") was the world's first teletext information service and a forerunner to the current BBC Red Button service. Ceefax was started by the BBC in 1974 and ended, after 38 years of broadcasting, at 23:32:19 BST ...

ORACLE An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word ...

systems, providing news headlines, weather, entertainment/lifestyle info, and other information. Electra used the

World System Teletext World System Teletext (WST) is the name of a standard for encoding and displaying teletext information, which is used as the standard for teletext throughout Europe today. It was adopted into the international standard CCIR 653 (now ITU-R BT.653 ...

(WST) protocol, the same protocol used by Ceefax and ORACLE, as well as by other teletext services in the rest of the

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

an continent. Electra also carried another teletext service on its higher-numbered pages, an SSS-created service called ''Tempo Text'' (originally named ''Cabletext''); it provided pages of 15-minute delayed stock quotes from the

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its liste ...

, AMEX and OTC, and the latest business news. Electra occupied pages 100 to 199, while Cabletext/Tempo could be found on pages 201 through 212. Electra was one of the very few

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

services in operation. A few other services were offered by some large-market TV stations in the US throughout the 1980s, such as ''Metrotext'' from

KTTV KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV ou ...

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

and ''KeyFax'' from

WFLD WFLD (channel 32) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed MyNetworkTV ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

. At the time of Electra's closing in 1993, it was the only teletext service in the United States.

References

1981 establishments in Ohio 1981 establishments in the United States 1993 disestablishments in the United States Products introduced in 1981 Products and services discontinued in 1993 Teletext Turner Broadcasting System Taft Broadcasting {{Teletext