Before the internet grew up, there were pay-per-minute 1-900 numbers
April 28, 2019 11:43 AM Subscribe
In 1987, AT&T turned the premium rate telephone numbers (Wikipedia) in the 1-900 series into an interactive, proto-internet of sorts, when they allowed the content providers to get a cut of the pay-per-call and per-minute charges, leading to an overnight boom in businesses, from dating and personals and pyschics (2x archived directories), to messages from celebrities like The Coreys and Warrant, plus sports news and video game tips, and a range of oddities and mysteries (YT x5), only $2.00 for the first minute and $0.99 for every additional minute. In 1993, there were more than 10,000 900 numbers in operation. But then the FTC cracked down (FTC.gov) and the internet grew up. This is the rise and fall of the 1-900 numbers (Priceonomics).
Bonus links: there were a lot of weird 1-900 numbers, and Mel Magazine picked some gems. If you'd like to browse more, here's 42 1-900 commercials in a YouTube playlist.
A.V. club asks What was it like to be a Nintendo game play counselor? Where Annie Zaleski interviewed three ex-tipsters for the inside scoop.
Bonus links: there were a lot of weird 1-900 numbers, and Mel Magazine picked some gems. If you'd like to browse more, here's 42 1-900 commercials in a YouTube playlist.
A.V. club asks What was it like to be a Nintendo game play counselor? Where Annie Zaleski interviewed three ex-tipsters for the inside scoop.
Here are some words they rhyme with Corey: gory, story, allegory, Montessori.
posted by hwyengr at 12:24 PM on April 28, 2019 [32 favorites]
posted by hwyengr at 12:24 PM on April 28, 2019 [32 favorites]
and a range of oddities and mysteries (YT x5)
From that link, 1-900-2-Insult
I mean, that's basically proto-Twitter, right?
I grew up in a house where I definitely wouldn't have been allowed to call any of these, and where I most definitely would have caught a beating if unexplained 1-900 charges showed up on the phone bill, so I never attempted to call any of these.
dating and personals
Obligatory Kids in the Hall: 555-JERK
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:26 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
From that link, 1-900-2-Insult
I mean, that's basically proto-Twitter, right?
I grew up in a house where I definitely wouldn't have been allowed to call any of these, and where I most definitely would have caught a beating if unexplained 1-900 charges showed up on the phone bill, so I never attempted to call any of these.
dating and personals
Obligatory Kids in the Hall: 555-JERK
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:26 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
That was unexpected. My wife worked as a psychic for one of these. Psychic Hotline, I think. Long time ago. She often had to advise clients not to be wasting their money on card readings.
posted by stonepharisee at 1:21 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by stonepharisee at 1:21 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
976-xxxx being an earlier incarnation as well.
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:23 PM on April 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 1:23 PM on April 28, 2019 [6 favorites]
Interesting set of links. When I was a public librarian we toured the central state library and one of the behind the scenes things was the old telephone reference room, where 24/7 reference librarians would use an extensive collection of printed facts to answer questions on call - many of them arguments from bar patrons before one could simply Google any conceivable objective fact. Not a 900 number, and it outlasted them, but ubiquitous mobile web technology finally killed it.
posted by codacorolla at 1:58 PM on April 28, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 1:58 PM on April 28, 2019 [8 favorites]
I remember New Kids on the Block had one as well. I recall a bunch of us teenage girls in someone's parents home office with the phone on speaker all hunched over it giggling.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 2:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 2:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
Reminds me of Loop Lines. You dial a number and someone else dials, you end up connected to a stranger.
posted by Splunge at 2:33 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Splunge at 2:33 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
One of my favorite 30 Rock bits is Liz Lemon as Bijou on 1-900-OKFACE.
posted by Nelson at 2:40 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Nelson at 2:40 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
Reminds me of Loop Lines. You dial a number and someone else dials, you end up connected to a stranger.
It's like chatroulette without the penis. Well, I guess it is nothing like chatroulette.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:46 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
It's like chatroulette without the penis. Well, I guess it is nothing like chatroulette.
posted by Literaryhero at 2:46 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
The UK version of the premium online adventure game was parodied in Limmy's Adventure Call.
posted by scruss at 3:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by scruss at 3:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
I have been able to find old ads on Youtube for the 900 number to call Santa that I remember, but I cannot find the version with the terrible jingle that ensured I still remember what the number was.
posted by ckape at 3:06 PM on April 28, 2019
posted by ckape at 3:06 PM on April 28, 2019
I grew up in a house where I definitely wouldn't have been allowed to call any of these, and where I most definitely would have caught a beating if unexplained 1-900 charges showed up on the phone bill, so I never attempted to call any of these
We had these in the UK too, I can’t remember what the common prefix was. Anyway, I was young and kind of lonely and my Mum went out with her boyfriend of the time 2 nights a week and we had a babysitter called Alison. I went through a phase of being addicted to ringing some of them when Mum was out, sitting in her room on her bedside phone, my memory is saying maybe in the dark? I can’t even really remember what ones I rang although I have a feeling it was astrology a lot of the time. At some point I grew out of it or moved on to some other obsession as I’m wont to do, and Alison stopped babysitting and was replaced by a neighbour’s daughter.
So about last year I was out for dinner with my Mum and she said hello to a woman passing the table.
Me: Who was that?
Mum: That was Alison, do you not remember she used to babysit you?
Me: Oh yeah! Wow I haven’t seen her in what, 25 or 30 years? She was before Neighbour’s Kid. Why did she leave anyway?
Mum: She didn’t leave, I let her go.
Me: Ooh really?? I never knew that. Why what happened?
Mum: I got some massive phone bills. It could only have been her, she had a boyfriend so she must have spent all the time I was out on the phone to him. I confronted her but she wouldn’t admit it, so I asked her not to come back.
Me: ...
I sat for a bit very much conflicted: wondering about the timeline, thanking the Lord that we hadn’t got itemised billing at the time, contemplating what use it would be all these years later to come clean to my Mum when I’m still not 100% sure it *wasn’t* her ringing her boyfriend, maybe still being a smidge afraid of my Ma shouting at me, feeling guilty for losing 16 year old Alison her gig... In the end I said nothing.
which to be fair if I’d done that in the first place instead of spending hours asking some rando if my stars would ever align with Barry Haughey’s the whole sorry affair wouldn’t have happened
posted by billiebee at 3:14 PM on April 28, 2019 [11 favorites]
We had these in the UK too, I can’t remember what the common prefix was. Anyway, I was young and kind of lonely and my Mum went out with her boyfriend of the time 2 nights a week and we had a babysitter called Alison. I went through a phase of being addicted to ringing some of them when Mum was out, sitting in her room on her bedside phone, my memory is saying maybe in the dark? I can’t even really remember what ones I rang although I have a feeling it was astrology a lot of the time. At some point I grew out of it or moved on to some other obsession as I’m wont to do, and Alison stopped babysitting and was replaced by a neighbour’s daughter.
So about last year I was out for dinner with my Mum and she said hello to a woman passing the table.
Me: Who was that?
Mum: That was Alison, do you not remember she used to babysit you?
Me: Oh yeah! Wow I haven’t seen her in what, 25 or 30 years? She was before Neighbour’s Kid. Why did she leave anyway?
Mum: She didn’t leave, I let her go.
Me: Ooh really?? I never knew that. Why what happened?
Mum: I got some massive phone bills. It could only have been her, she had a boyfriend so she must have spent all the time I was out on the phone to him. I confronted her but she wouldn’t admit it, so I asked her not to come back.
Me: ...
I sat for a bit very much conflicted: wondering about the timeline, thanking the Lord that we hadn’t got itemised billing at the time, contemplating what use it would be all these years later to come clean to my Mum when I’m still not 100% sure it *wasn’t* her ringing her boyfriend, maybe still being a smidge afraid of my Ma shouting at me, feeling guilty for losing 16 year old Alison her gig... In the end I said nothing.
which to be fair if I’d done that in the first place instead of spending hours asking some rando if my stars would ever align with Barry Haughey’s the whole sorry affair wouldn’t have happened
posted by billiebee at 3:14 PM on April 28, 2019 [11 favorites]
Came to the thread to make sure Lisa Simpson’s calls to the Corey Hotline were represented. Very gratified to see hwyengr beat me to it.
The video clip, from the episode that first aired in the US on February 4, 1993.
posted by darkstar at 4:06 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
The video clip, from the episode that first aired in the US on February 4, 1993.
posted by darkstar at 4:06 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
In the summer of 1990, a friend and I got jobs with an entrepreneur who had burned out of his BigLaw job, mortgaged his brownstone, and founded a 1-900 startup. The idea was that business people would call the number when they got to a new city, and the operator would pull up a list of local events based on the preferences they had on file. They were expected to pay $10-15 for the privilege. (Flat rate, I believe, not per-minute in this case.)
So my friend and I made $9/hour to sit on this guy’s couch calling the chamber of commerce in every county in the USA, going through the brochures they sent us, and coding the venues, festivals, and events according to a scheme we had devised. There was the founder and CEO, a COO, CFO, and a secretary there in the brownstone with us. They were supposedly close to signing a deal with Amex that was going to fund the whole thing, but that never came through before the school year started up again. I assume the guy lost his shirt, and, possibly, his house. It’s too bad really - five years later he could have had a .com IPO and made millions.
Also on this job, I saw a cell phone for the first time. The brownstone was in Midtown Manhattan, and one day on the way back from lunch a guy jumps out of a cab with this brick held to the side of his head, cutting right in front of us. All I heard him say as he charged into the building was “Did you send a fax?” That has been my mental image of “businessman hard at work doing business” ever since.
posted by five toed sloth at 4:40 PM on April 28, 2019 [18 favorites]
So my friend and I made $9/hour to sit on this guy’s couch calling the chamber of commerce in every county in the USA, going through the brochures they sent us, and coding the venues, festivals, and events according to a scheme we had devised. There was the founder and CEO, a COO, CFO, and a secretary there in the brownstone with us. They were supposedly close to signing a deal with Amex that was going to fund the whole thing, but that never came through before the school year started up again. I assume the guy lost his shirt, and, possibly, his house. It’s too bad really - five years later he could have had a .com IPO and made millions.
Also on this job, I saw a cell phone for the first time. The brownstone was in Midtown Manhattan, and one day on the way back from lunch a guy jumps out of a cab with this brick held to the side of his head, cutting right in front of us. All I heard him say as he charged into the building was “Did you send a fax?” That has been my mental image of “businessman hard at work doing business” ever since.
posted by five toed sloth at 4:40 PM on April 28, 2019 [18 favorites]
Lisa Simpson’s calls to the Corey Hotline
As seen in Non-Threatening Boys Magazine!
posted by Nelson at 4:45 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
As seen in Non-Threatening Boys Magazine!
posted by Nelson at 4:45 PM on April 28, 2019 [4 favorites]
Sitting up late for Dr Katz, Get Stuffed or Noisy Mothers on ITV in the Nineties left one number indelibly etched into my brain: "oh-eight-nine-one, twenty-seven, twenty-seven, twenty-seven, oooh!"
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 5:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 5:03 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
They really were the predecessors of the dotcom startups. Not the current wave of $6M in VC funding for a dry cleaning pickup service startups but the fill your house with servers you charged to your Visa card and pursue your passion wave.
A few years ago, I interviewed the lady who ran one version of the music streaming number used by Spin (and a few other people who worked in the industry) for yet another 1-900 retrospective article. She had worked at a world music nonprofit and saw it as a way to bring audiences more than they could hear on the radio.
I remember her telling me about living in a cheap Brooklyn apparent with a nest of phone lines, with a single scone her only meal for a weekend while she waited for a Spin check in Monday's mail. It seemed like she got the Spin contract after the previous vendor folded.
posted by smelendez at 5:18 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
A few years ago, I interviewed the lady who ran one version of the music streaming number used by Spin (and a few other people who worked in the industry) for yet another 1-900 retrospective article. She had worked at a world music nonprofit and saw it as a way to bring audiences more than they could hear on the radio.
I remember her telling me about living in a cheap Brooklyn apparent with a nest of phone lines, with a single scone her only meal for a weekend while she waited for a Spin check in Monday's mail. It seemed like she got the Spin contract after the previous vendor folded.
posted by smelendez at 5:18 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
Call Mean Gene at 1-900-909-9900 and get the latest wrestling scoops. Or if you're a little bit older wrestling fan, 1-900-HOT-BRUNO ( Bruno Sammartino)
posted by deezil at 7:05 PM on April 28, 2019
posted by deezil at 7:05 PM on April 28, 2019
fluttering hellfire: “1-900-490-FREAK”If you're like me, and I know you are, you need some context for this one.
https://freddiefreaker.fandom.com/wiki/1-900-490-FREAK
https://lostmediawiki.com/1-900-490-FREAK_(lost_audio_from_an_interactive_1900_number;_1987-1995)
posted by ob1quixote at 7:47 PM on April 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think of 900 numbers in two contexts, mostly:
1) All the sex chat lines, which advertised heavily during the times when I was watching TV, after getting off the second shift. Probably counting on anyone being up at that time of night being lonely, which was pretty canny.
2) DC Comics' "Should Jason Todd die?" gimmick, which was maybe the sleaziest thing that comics has ever done, a category with a fair amount of competition.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:02 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
1) All the sex chat lines, which advertised heavily during the times when I was watching TV, after getting off the second shift. Probably counting on anyone being up at that time of night being lonely, which was pretty canny.
2) DC Comics' "Should Jason Todd die?" gimmick, which was maybe the sleaziest thing that comics has ever done, a category with a fair amount of competition.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:02 PM on April 28, 2019 [3 favorites]
still my favourite use of these little bits of media past
posted by halation at 12:41 AM on April 29, 2019
posted by halation at 12:41 AM on April 29, 2019
2) DC Comics' "Should Jason Todd die?" gimmick, which was maybe the sleaziest thing that comics has ever done, a category with a fair amount of competition.
O'Neill's claims about a single person distorting the result make it even worse.
O'Neill's claims about a single person distorting the result make it even worse.
"I heard it was one guy, who programmed his computer to dial the thumbs down number every ninety seconds for eight hours, who made the difference", O'Neil said in a Newsarama interview conducted alongside writer Judd Winick during the "Under The Hood" arc.posted by zamboni at 4:40 AM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
There were also ample opportunities to be scammed. You would receive a card in the mail that looked like a lottery ticket with a section of scratch-foil on it and the message to scratch to see if you were a winner. You would scratch and, of course, you were a winner, and all you needed to do was to call this 1-900 number to verify your win. I assume they would keep you on the line as long as possible. There was always a TV or Stereo system as the grand prize, and there WAS one available to be won so TECHNICALLY it wasn't illegal to do this.
posted by Barticus at 5:38 AM on April 29, 2019
posted by Barticus at 5:38 AM on April 29, 2019
I was a moderator on a 900-line (they started with 550 here in the Boston area) and garnered my first Moth Story Slam win with my story on how I managed to get fired from that cushy gig by impersonating my boss to amuse the customers.
posted by xingcat at 7:21 AM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by xingcat at 7:21 AM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
You'd have thought the webcam industry would have rendered the audio-only version redundant.
Phone sex is a big thing these days, you'd be surprised. But you generally sign up on a website, give it your credit card number, and they bill you direct when you talk to women picked on the website. Ultimately, it's done over the phone though.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:12 AM on April 29, 2019
Phone sex is a big thing these days, you'd be surprised. But you generally sign up on a website, give it your credit card number, and they bill you direct when you talk to women picked on the website. Ultimately, it's done over the phone though.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:12 AM on April 29, 2019
I always enjoyed the Beavis and Butthead segment where the boys call a phone sex line and the operator tells them they should set up their own 900 number... so they do.
posted by infinitewindow at 3:06 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 3:06 PM on April 29, 2019 [2 favorites]
This post was inspired by hearing Sir Mix-A-Lot's "Baby Got Back" recently, and wondering how many people dialed 1-900-MIXALOT to kick them nasty thoughts.
And I don't have to try now, because someone did, for Yahoo Answers:
Yeah, I'm feeling old.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:01 PM on May 1, 2019
And I don't have to try now, because someone did, for Yahoo Answers:
"We're sorry, but we're having a problem in completeing the call as dialed, please check the number and call again."I'm surprised no one uses this line, as 867-5309 was auctioned off on eBay for $5,100 ... a decade ago.
Anonymous · 1 decade ago
Yeah, I'm feeling old.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:01 PM on May 1, 2019
I'm glad Jenny got something for her trouble.
posted by InfidelZombie at 2:43 PM on May 1, 2019
posted by InfidelZombie at 2:43 PM on May 1, 2019
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