NNTP is a wonderful protocol, arguably the simplest of the 4 mailnews protocols (IMAP, POP, SMTP, and NNTP). While it seems to share the same basic format as RFC822 messages, it actually tends to avoid some of the more inane issues with the RFC822 formatting (generally prohibiting comments and whitespace folding).
Unfortunately, the internet by the early 2000s started turning more and more into an HTTP(S)-only zone. Usenet itself hemorrhaged its population base, especially as ISPs shut down their instances (e.g., because someone found one child porn instance somewhere in alt.binaries.*).
