Word: dialing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rock-concert schedules. Prices run from as little as 50 cents a call to nearly $5 for the first minute. Total revenues are expected to reach $450 million this year, up 50% from 1987. While the industry has already encountered a legislative clampdown that could limit the use of dial-a-porn and party lines, investors believe legitimate caller-paid services have huge growth potential. "This is a hot, faddish business right now," says Chris Elwell, senior editor of the Information Industry Bulletin. "But it's only in its infancy...
...Today's dialing-for-data industry was actually born decades ago, when New York Telephone first started offering the time of day in 1928 and the weather report in 1937. The company added Dial-a-Joke in 1974 and a recorded Santa Claus message the following year. But no one made money on the announcements until 1980, when AT&T launched its Dial-It service. The 900-prefix, long- distance lines enabled callers to participate in automated polls, typically sponsored by TV shows, for 50 cents for the first minute. Initially AT&T pocketed all the toll charges...
...court), cable operators are not even required to carry all the broadcast stations in their local area. As a result, some small stations have been dropped; others have been shifted from desirable low-channel positions near the networks to the less watched numbers at the high end of the dial -- "cable Siberia," as some call it. Viewers have little recourse against such moves because in most communities there is only one cable company to choose from. "There is only one funnel to the TV home," Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a House telecommunications subcommittee...
Dirty talk isn't cheap. "Dial-a-porn" telephone services have become a huge $2.4 billion industry. After listening to complaints about easy access to sexually explicit telephone messages, the Federal Communications Commission last week fined two California-based companies $600,000 each for transmitting obscene material across state lines. Like many other dial-a-porn lines, the companies did nothing to keep minors from using the services...
Earlier, the House of Representatives sent an even sharper message by approving an outright ban on dial-a-porn lines in an amendment to the $8.3 billion education bill. The measure would simply outlaw any "obscene" telephone services. Although some legislators expressed doubt about the bill's constitutionality, California Republican William Dannemeyer, a co-sponsor of the amendment, declared, "People want it banned. Let the Supreme Court rule on constitutionality...