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Teletext After Hours

After Hours was an adults-only daily feature that ran on Teletext from January 1993 to the 27th February 1993. Its existence is interesting, because no adult services were mentioned in Teletext Ltd's winning proposal to run a commercial teletext service. It must've been dreamed up during the interim period.

The regular features were:

• Sex Secrets of the Stars (Celebrity interviews)
• Bits On The Side (General articles)
• Hot Line (Readers' poll)
• The James Whale Rage Page (Complaints about life issues)
• Sex Quiz (Add up your answers to make a score)
• Susan James' Sexscopes (Relationship-themed horoscopes)
• Turner The Screw (Cartoon about a corrupt prison guard)
• Outlines (Gay news)
• Outpost (Advice on gay issues by the popular agony aunt Karen Krizanovich)
• Girls Guide (Women's issues advice by Karen K)
• Mens Room (Men's issues advice by Karen K)

Why I Find It Interesting

Imagine it's 1993. The AIDS crisis is still in full force, homosexuality is barely tolerated in society, and you don't want to be known about for your own safety. Where can you turn? Teletext broadcast a completely anonymous way for you to receive news and support. Helplines and postal addresses were shown, and not in a patronising "if you've been affected by any of these issues" way.

Some of the pages were basic money-grabs, with premium rate telephone numbers everywhere, but those were obviously just for entertainment purposes. The serious stuff that mattered, the agony aunt pages, the news - those were presented clearly and factually with no judgement. Even Karen K's trademark snark was significantly toned down.

I don't know if it was a considered choice or an accident, but I admire Teletext Ltd's decision to air After Hours. For its short life, it reached a section of the public that was considerably underserved. And that's why I find it interesting.

Selected Pages

Here are a few of the news items that I found topical. There were typically two pages of news per day.

Quick Demise

There is a rumour that After Hours was broadcast beyond its 5am closure time one morning, making it visible to children outside of the watershed. Children looking for their favourite pages might use page up/down to search for their content when it didn't appear, showing the adult content instead.

There's no evidence that this ever happened. This is what I suspect is the truth (and what would confirm it)...

Possible Origin of the Rumour

Digitiser, the computer games section, was popular with audiences of all ages. It was broadcast on pages 370-375 for 24 hours a day, and After Hours was broadcast on pages 380-389 between 10.30pm and 5am. There were no pages between 376-379. It's possible that a teenager who stayed up past 10.30pm to read about computer games might accidentally bump into the adult section by simply pressing page up.

I don't buy that there was a malfunction. While glitches were more likely due to the service being new, such a problem would've affected more than just After Hours. The outcry in the newspapers would have been significant, which did happen with several of Digitiser's articles. However, a search of the newspaper archives doesn't yield any results whatsoever for After Hours.

To definitively confirm whether or not it happened the way the rumour said, we would need a VHS recording for every single day that it was broadcast, for its entire broadcast duration (10.30pm to beyond 5am). It's a tall order.

Abrupt End and the Independent Television Commission

At some point before 10.45am on the 28th February 1993, ITV and Channel 4's teletext services changed. Teletext on ITV was now for news and sport, and on Channel 4 it was for leisure and games. This change was completely unexpected, and not signposted anywhere until after the change had occurred. After Hours had been broadcast as usual the previous night.

After Hours was mentioned on a summary of the changes they'd made:

It never returned. I think its loss was part of a bigger shake-up, caused by pressure from the ITC. One part of their annual report suggested that Teletext Ltd hadn't managed to fulfil their licence conditions initially, and the service was relaunched in order to fix it.

Another part of the report says this:

"Early in the year the ITC intervened in relation to the feature After Hours which contained sexual material unsuitable even after 10.30pm when it was transmitted. Teletext withdrew the feature."

So what was the content that upset the ITC? It can't be the James Whale Rage Page or the Turner The Screw cartoon, as they had no sexual content at all. None of the rest of the content would've looked too out of place in an adult themed '90s magazine, especially considering that attitudes towards sex were changing. Karen K's column in Sky magazine was even more candid.

Also, look at Channel 5's launch line-up, notorious at the time for showing soft-core pornography at night, or the idolisation of Lara Croft's big jugs. It's even more tame when compared to modern standards, with novels like 50 Shades of Grey being considerably more sexual.

Perhaps the ITC, running under the government that created Section 28, didn't want news, help and advice on gay issues to be freely available.

Whatever the reason was, they didn't revise it and it didn't come back.

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