Financial information on Ceefax and ORACLE

Teletext provides free financial information in the U.K. via Ceefax (BBC) and ORACLE (ITN). These two services are com pared for coverage, timeliness and layout. ORACLE gives more share prices than Ceefax but in most other areas Ceefax is superior. The FT Index reported with a mean delay of 10-14 minutes on Ceefax and 15-19 minutes on ORACLE. A small panel of viewers decisively preferred the layout of Ceefax to that of ORACLE. The mean length of company reports on ORACLE is twice that on Ceefax.