User:Jheald/Gateway (videotex service)

Gateway was an early 1980s online service created in Southern California by the Times-Mirror Company, owners of the Los Angeles Times.

It was seen as the second largest experiment in videotex in America, after Knight Ridder's Viewtron in Southern Florida. The service launched in 1984, but closed in March 1986.

History
Videotex, the idea of using telephone connections to deliver menu-driven text and graphics and other services on demand to domestic television screens, had slowly developed in Europe in the 1970s. But in 1980, with systems like Prestel and Minitel going live in Britain and France, America woke up to a new "hot idea". AT&T, in line to gain both from increased telephone use and from potential equipment sales, proposed a system with rich geometrically-drawn graphics based on a Canadian system Telidon. The higher-quality graphics were seen as decisive to attract American consumers and advertisers, and a bandwagon formed around the new standard, called NAPLPS. Meanwhile major newspaper groups, used to local dominance in their own markets, and with their newly-computerised newsrooms, saw themselves as the natural content providers and managers of any such system – and also, the players with most to lose from any successful encroachment onto their territory by one of their competitors.

The Times-Mirror company's involvement began in 1981, when it formed a Videotex Services division, and the following year it launched a trial from March to December for 150 homes in Mission Viejo in Orange County and 200 homes in Rancho Palos Verdes. Software was provided by InfoMart, a Toronto-based company which had been involved in trials of Telidon in Canada. The test participants rated news, banking, shopping, and games as the four most useful services, though it was not clear how reflective such results would be for users who would have to pay for the service, rather than getting it for free. Nevertheless, Times-Mirror resolved to ramp up the system, offering more services and better presentation, forming a joint venture with InfoMart called Videotex America to market it to other newspaper groups across the country.

The fully commercial service went live in mid 1984, offering users news, entertainment and restaurant information, email, shopping, banking, games, reference data, and travel services, including flight information and booking services. It was priced at $30 a month, which included the rental of a dedicated AT&T Sceptre home videotex terminal. However take-up was slow, and retention rates also poor, many users feeling that the service was not worth the cost.

The service was re-tooled in 1985 to make it available to microcomputer users, and began to pick up a little interest from techies. But it never found a general audience

in Los Angeles took a leading role with equipment from AT&T and software from InfoMart of Toronto which had been involved in earlier trials of the Telidon system in Canada.

technology to deliver menu-driven information and other services  text and graphics   "hot idea" in the early 1980s on demand to television screen

, and which became the Times-Mirror company's partner in the joint venture, called Videotex America.