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I'm not sure if there's much truth to it, but I read that the BBC news headlines are so short as there is some central system that provides them to Ceefax too (

• DLWormwood 17y ago
  That was actually mentioned in the article... So why is the BBC so good when most others are so bad? Maybe it's in the BBC's blood: The news organization originated as a radio station, where word count is at a premium and you must communicate clearly to immediately grab listeners. In a spoken medium, each word is gone as soon as it's uttered, so convoluted exposition confuses even more than it does in print. Ceefax (one of the few surviving videotext services) also helps instill conciseness in BBC's journalists. Text on low-def televisions has horrible resolution and only allows for a minute word count (somewhat like mobile).