HISTORY

John Hedger, the founder of Surelink, began his career in broadcasting in 1974 with London Weekend Television. After a period working on programme production, he joined the embryonic ORACLE teletext project which was set up in 1975, based at LWT, to provide a trial teletext service for the whole of ITV.

During his time with ORACLE, which subsequently became ORACLE Teletext Limited, John served in almost every capacity within the organisation, eventually gaining the post of Head of Technical Services where he was responsible for the entire technical operation of the company. In total, John worked at ORACLE for some 16 years, and during that time was responsible for many innovations and enhancements to the technology. He was especially involved in the development of teletext subtitling for the deaf and also pioneered Telesoftware. He served on a number of committees and published many technical papers on teletext and related technology.

Deciding to leave ORACLE in 1990 to pursue a career as an independent consultant, John joined Softel as project manager to deliver a teletext system for Swiss Teletext, at that time, the largest and most complex in the world. He also worked for Channel 4 Television in designing and developing a Programme Delivery Control service, the first implemented on a UK national TV channel. He was also heavily involved in the technical standards process for PDC within various EBU committees.

He became a technical adviser to the joint Carlton-Intelfax bid for the public Teletext licence. Although the bid was unsuccessful, Intelfax invited him to join them as their Technical Director, a post which he held until 2000. During that time, Intelfax expanded from some 25 employees to over 100 and at its peak, operated 31 teletext services as well as several high-profile websites. The company provided offline and live subtitling services to Channel 4 and other high-profile broadcasters, and also offered commercials subtitling and audio description services. While with Intelfax, John effectively reprised his ORACLE role, managing the company's rapidly expanding technology base through a period of intense technical change with the emergence of the new digital TV platforms.

Deciding to leave the Board of Intelfax in 2000 to relaunch his independent consultancy, John remained as a part-time consultant to Intelfax until its closure in early 2005 following the loss of its major Channel 4 subtitling contract. Since relaunching, work for other clients has included:

Technical Adviser to the eTitle Project, an EU-funded pan-European initiative which seeks to automate many aspects of subtitle production and repurposing.

Technical Adviser and Facilitator to a leading UK subtitling provider in bidding for, winning, and implementing facilities for a major subtitling contract in Australia.

Adviser on selection of studio facilities and OB link technology for a UK sports TV programming provider

John continues to be involved as a technical adviser in a number of patent cases in the United States, where his earlier work on Telesoftware and Teletext has been relevant to the litigation.