(Crying)
Why did people call a phone number to cry?
1-900-9099 cry. I want to explain the weird confluence of events
that made 1-900 lines a booming industry and why even today we should care why people called them.
"Call 1-900. "Let's call one nine hundred."
"And I'll reveal the amazing answer." Okay, first things first — I saw 1-900
CRY and I was like, "is this a Tim and Eric thing, is this real?"
But I can tell you that I found a couple of old newspaper articles actually referencing
a sad confessions line with the same or similar phone numbers.
Here's 1-900-9099-CRY converted to numbers, and here it is in an article.
Basically, the article said that you'd call them one 900 number, hear a really really sad story,
and have the option to leave one of your own. The result of which being...(Crying Woman).
But let's back up a bit. How did this weird thing called the 1-900 line actually start?
As always, let's cut to Jimmy Carter. "Thank you Pete, I've enjoyed talking to you,
thank you very much." "Bye, thank you Mr."
This is Jimmy Carter in 1977 doing live call-ins with CBS News at 1-900-242-1611.
Now if you're familiar with 1-900 numbers and their..."adult" reputation -
"Expect the unexpected." You might worry that Jimmy Carter
was about to tell you all the times he lusted in his heart, like in that famous Playboy interview.
But this is sort of a pre-history of the 1-900 number, and it was invented
as kind of a mass call filtering system. You know how Super Chats serve as filter for
thousands of comments in live streams?This article about that Carter 1-900 line explains it — after
competing with hundreds of others at switching stations, calls were balanced geographically.
Phone companies kept all the fees, but the fees weren't high and they were used
primarily as a filtering mechanism. That's how ABC News used them in a
famous 1980 poll about the presidential election. NASA even had a phone line you could call in on
and listen on space missions live. They actually even had it going during the Challenger disaster.
But the real breakthrough, that happened in 1985 when the phone companies had an epiphany.
"We'd like you to come and join us,
just call this number." I don't want to join you.
"Isn't there somebody you'd like to talk to from your past."
Does this guy kind of look like me? Little worried he looks like me.
"Swedes are special people: they live longer than anyone and never go to war."
Wha? "Because for thousands of years
they have unlocked the secrets of the universe inside themselves. Now comes this special woman
Madame Eva from Sweden to unlock your secrets. Call this number — use your push button phone and
she will give you a personalized reading about your life, love, success and future. Call now."
This is not the branding I associate with Sweden. Okay, so how did this happen? How did we go from
Jimmy Carter to: "he actually speaks English! And now you can hear him by calling this number."
This kind of stuff relies on two big things: payments and platform.
First, 900 numbers when they started had none of the friction of a credit card transaction.
The charge would go straight to your phone bill. That was huge.
You didn't have to enter your credit card number. This is the thing that everybody is
chasing after today with all these subscription revenue products. They don't want you to have
to pay again, they want it to just happen. The second key ingredient is that 1985 thing.
That year, AT&T started down the road to distribute payments to 1-900 phone
operators. Instead of just keeping them for themselves, they created a platform.
Does that sound at all familiar for today's information slash creator economy?
They provided a Rev share — initially a dollar 35 out of the first two dollars.
Acquisition was primarily through TV ads, though classified ads played a role too.
Now if you have a stereotype about these ads, it would probably be that they were
all about...adult...relationships that you could forge over the 1-900 line.
Contemporary papers from the early 90s that claimed 1-900 numbers had boomed to
a multi-billion dollar industry and that adult stuff wasn't the biggest driver.
I'm skeptical of that claim, but there were definitely other revenue sources for 1-900 lines.
Average charges were about 11 dollars a call. You'd find everything like Jose Canseco's
baseball confessions line and even recipes like those made by Julia Child. "Bon appetit!"
And a lot of young people were using this service too. The New Kids on the Block supposedly had a
hundred thousand calls a week during their peak. "And we're the New Kids on the Block! Call
1-900-860-1100 and enter instantly to win a trip for four to be with the New Kids in New Orleans."
So what went wrong? In 1992, the Supreme Court basically
killed the adult 1-900 numbers by allowing a 1989 anti-adult phone number law to stand.
Shortly after, the FTC clamped down and they required clearer price disclosures
at the beginning of every call. Basically, you'd need to know that
this was is going to cost you a lot of money before you decided to continue the call.
Of course, over time it was supplanted by...you guessed it: "the information super highway."
So the obvious comparison here is to the web or to apps.
I mean, initially AT&T offered a 67% Revenue share. That's almost exactly the
same as what Apple offers app developers today. There are a lot of analogies, too. I mean, these
1-900 celebrity lines: "if you have a touchtone phone, call us on the Motley Crue hotline!"
They're a lot like what you see on Cameo today. "Good luck at your holiday concert tonight! You're
gonna do great. And I love those curls." But I want to talk about the crying.
"If you're under 18, ask your parents before you call. 1-900-9099-CRY."
What I find resonant about this is that all these emotions that we see on the web,
the needs for catharsis, the totally obscure interests that have millions of fans,
that all existed before and it was tapped into, at least a little bit by 1-900 lines.
"Your phone number to the biggest cover-up ever: call 1-900-909 UFOs."
And while this industry ended up making a lot of money, it maxed out at something that was
ultimately niche. It took the technology of the web to take those desires that
were already there when 1-900 lines were big and make them take over the world.
What is the 1-900 number of today? What is the niche thing that we've
tapped into in our current society, but hasn't taken over the world
yet because the technology isn't there? My bet is that in 10 or 20 years we'll be
able to look back at something and in hindsight say that it was an obvious precursor to the way
the entire world changed. Right now,
it's just the mystery on the end of the line. "What makes people all over America break down
and cry like this?" (VO VOICE)
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