Buzz! Computers
From Sega Retro
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| Buzz! Computers |
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| Original airdate: 1988 — 1991-07-19 |
| Original channel(s): Channel 4, S4C |
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Buzz! Computers was a teletext page (568) maintained as part of the Channel 4 teletext service in the United Kingdom (at the time managed by ORACLE). It was part of its wider Buzz! section of the service; one which targeted teenagers and many areas of entertainment. As the name suggests, Buzz! Computers was a page about computing and video games. Initially it was just a continuation of the computer games content previously included in the "Tech" section, with ten pages of content - half of which were the Gallup charts, broadcast every Thursday and Friday. The page switched to space news on the weekends, with technology news being featured Mondays to Wednesdays. During 1989 it became daily, Monday - Friday, albeit with the same number of pages per week, but now two per day, one of which being the Gallup charts. The section was finally expanded in January 1990 to six pages per day, and from the June 29th 1990 edition started to feature Sega content on a Friday. Initially this was shared with computer games , but following the release of the Mega Drive later that year and the increased number of software releases Fridays became dedicated to covering Sega consoles, with games reviewed by "Steve Bramble".
In July 1991 Buzz! Computers was rebranded as FX and expanded to seven days a week, with Fridays remaining "Sega Day", Saturdays becoming "Nintendo Day", and Sundays becoming "Handheld Day".
At the time, the UK's Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) would manage "franchise rounds" every few years, where television companies could bid to run regional parts of the ITV network. ORACLE successfully managed to persuade the IBA that the ITV and Channel 4 teletext services could be counted as a franchise - one that it would then lose during the 1991 round of auctions to Teletext Ltd.. As a result, most of ORACLE's teletext services ceased broadcasting on the 31st December 1992, including Buzz!, however Teletext would introduce a brand new, dedicated video game page in the form of Digitiser the following day.
Archive
Ratings
- Main article: Buzz! Computers/Ratings.