Thank you for the reply, Phil. It is still a sad moment to know that my ISP is going to discontinue a service that I value, but I do appreciate the three months' notice and your candour in explaining that the service is only used by fractions of a percent of your customers and so you have made an economic decision to drop it.

I have added a third party news server now and will check it out in preparation for the switch-off.

who did you use ?
and are they any good