telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (10/05/89)
The following item appeared in Richard Roeper's column in the <Chicago Sun Times>, Wednesday, October 4, 1989. I thought you might enjoy it. Phone Gimmicks Put Common Sense on Hold ======================================= By Richard Roeper "Hi kids, this is Jose Canseco of the Oakland A's. If you want to know the true story about how fast I was driving when I got that ticket and why I had a handgun in my car, call the Jose Canseco Hotline. Just dial 1-900-xxx-xxxx...." -- Television commercial Maybe I'm preternaturally presumptuous, but something tells me that when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he did not do it so youngsters could one day pay $1 a minute to hear a baseball player's rationalizations for driving his Jaguar 125 m.p.h. and keeping a loaded handgun in the car. Nevertheless, the toll call industry is big business, with projected revenues of $1.5 billion for 1989. There are more than 1000 of these 900 numbers, including -- + The US Naval Observatory Master Clock "Eastern Time, 9 hours, 13 minutes, 45 seconds. Universal Time, 13 hours, 13 minutes, 50 seconds." + New Kids on the Block Hotline "Hi, this is Donnie of the New Kids, and it's really cool to be able to talk to you again...." + Laugh Line "Did you hear about the ghost who could never lie to his wife? She could see right through him!" + True Romantic Confessions "My name is Corinne, and I'm a waitress in Reno. For a long time, I had this thing for my sister's boyfriend, and last week when she was out of town...." Among my favorites are the Paula Abdul Hotline, Women's Private Fantasies, Penn State Football Update, NBC Soapline and Telephone Pals. The first 900 number was established in 1980, but the concept did not really take off until about 1986. That's also about the time when the telephone took control of our lives. Until a few years ago, the phone was still a rather basic communications device. You dialed a number; if someone answered you were in business. If no one answered, it meant no one was home. If you got a busy signal, it meant someone was already on the phone, so you hung up and called back later. Now there are more phone features and options than you would find in a new car. If you are expecting a call at home, but you have to go out, you can forward your calls to another number. If you wish to take calls while you are on the phone, there is call waiting. If you want to talk to two parties at once, there's three way calling. If you want to place calls from your car or your boat or your backyard or an airplane, there are car phones and boat phones and cordless phones and airplane phones. If you wear a beeper, you can be reached anywhere. If you wear the Timely Beeper, which is a fake, self-activated beeping device, you can pretend to receive an important call then cut out early on a nightmare date or a disasterous business meeting. As if all that was not enough, Illinois Bell is introducing several new services to the Chicago area. Repeat dialing allows you to dial the same number over and over again for a 30 minute period. This would be a fun feature for the 'Fatal Attraction' types who want to call ex-lovers AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!!!!! Call screening lets customers block calls from designated numbers. This is an especially useful device if your ex-boyfriend is the kind of guy who goes out on Friday night, pops down a dozen beers, comes home at 3 AM, looks through the old photo album while listening to 'your song' and says to himself, "I've got a brilliant idea -- I'll call her now and ramble incoherently, and she'll want me back for sure!" Automatic callback instructs your phone to call back the last incoming call, whether it was answered or not. Say you're at home and you receive an unsolicited sales call from some guy at 9 PM; wouldn't it be fun to call the salesguy back and engage in some recreational harassment of your own? In addition to all these complications, on November 11, the suburbs will switch to the new 708 area code. So for example, if you live in Cicero and you want to call your buddy down the street at 63rd and Pulaski, you'll have to dial 1-312 before his regular number. Phone clutter knows no bounds. Toll-free numbers and toll-call numbers and Dial 9 for an outside line and voice mail and designer phones and credit card calls and designated ringing and Information, what city please? and TickeMaster phone jams and call identification. Oh, for the days of basic black rotary dial phones and HUdson 3-2700! There's only one person I know who still has the traditional dial telephone -- my mother. I wanted to tell her how proud I am that she has never given in to any of this phone gadgetry, so I gave her a call. And was instructed to leave my message after the beep. ==================== [Moderator's Note: For non-Chicagoans, 'HUdson 3-2700' was part of a jingle which played night and day, it seems, on television and the radio for a home improvement service. After telling about their services in the late movie commercial slots, a man's voice would sing, 'Hudson Three, Two Seven Hundred'. PT]
roy%phri@uunet.uu.net (Roy Smith) (10/09/89)
> X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 432, message 1 of 7 > The following item appeared in Richard Roeper's column in the <Chicago > Sun Times>, Wednesday, October 4, 1989. > "Hi kids, this is Jose Canseco of the Oakland A's. If you want to know > the true story about how fast I was driving when I got that ticket [...] This isn't for real, is it? If it is, it certainly fits any reasonable definition of obscene that I can think of. Even paying $20 to hear Wanda tell me what she wants to do to me isn't as bad. Yesterday, I saw a commercial twice (during the Giants-Eagles football game, which also qualified as obscene) which urged people to call one of two numbers ($2 for the first minute) to register their opinion on abortion: Should it be legal or not? The votes will be tallied and sent to the appropriate legislators (who, if they have any sense, will toss them in the trash, where they belong). This one really bothered me. I'm sure there are a lot of rabidly pro- or anti-abortionists who leapt to their phones to make sure their vote was counted, if for no other reason than because they feared that if they didn't, the other side would out-call them and win. I don't mind people expressing their opinions (even if I don't agree with them) and I don't, in theory, mind people taking polls, but what these guys were doing was just being mercinaries, willing to fight for whichever side would bid higher for their services, or more accurately, for both sides at the same time. Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute 455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy -or- roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu "The connector is the network"
kaufman@neon.stanford.edu (Marc T. Kaufman) (10/12/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0439m02@vector.dallas.tx.us> Roy Smith <roy%phri@ uunet.uu.net> writes: -> X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 432, message 1 of 7 -> The following item appeared in Richard Roeper's column in the <Chicago -> Sun Times>, Wednesday, October 4, 1989. -> "Hi kids, this is Jose Canseco of the Oakland A's. If you want to know -> the true story about how fast I was driving when I got that ticket [...] > This isn't for real, is it? If it is, it certainly fits any >reasonable definition of obscene that I can think of. Even paying $20 >to hear Wanda tell me what she wants to do to me isn't as bad. The followup to this is that Jose is holding a drawing for some World Series tickets. First you call his 900- number. The recording tells you ANOTHER 900- number to call to enter the drawing. I guess even celebrities can be sleaze. Marc Kaufman (kaufman@Neon.stanford.edu)