1-900-101X (Or 1-900 Numbers)

8th February, 2024

[Disclaimer: While this article contains no explicit material, the nature of discussing 1-900 phone lines delves into NSFW territory very quickly. If you’re under eighteen, please look elsewhere.]

Call me now for your free readin’!

Remember when you tried to call Santa on the phone that one time? Remember how hard your parents beat your ass once they got the phone bill in the mail a few weeks later?

1-900 commercials targeted to children have largely been banned or regulated since the 1990s.

Well, maybe you don’t remember Santa. Maybe you remember calling up Nintendo Power or another “game tips hotline” you found in the back of a magazine. Maybe you even remember SEGA’s hotline, featured on every game printed for a period of time. Or maybe you remember those crazy psychic commercials that made you think you could have all the answers for the mysterious low price of “free for the first three minutes”. This blogpost is about those commercials.

For a brief, incomplete history, 1-900 phone services have been in use since 1977, during a CBS Radio call-in with President Carter. Originally, the area code was in use to block large amounts of traffic, but it was quickly restructured to be a premium-rate area code. (Meaning you usually pay a hefty fee with each call or minute.) The 976 area code was also in use for a similar reason. For the sake of this article, we’ll be grouping those two together.

Advertisers quickly snapped up the opportunity to make boatloads of cash in this new market. Novelty phone lines, such as the Santa hotlines mentioned previously, opened up in abundance. By the end of the eighties, every Saturday morning commercial break was full of numbers to call, with everyone from Hulk Hogan to Freddy Krueger.

However, the industry was already starting to crack. In 1987, a young girl apparently managed to rack up a phone bill of $17,000 dialing 976 numbers, although I believe that to be a bit of a dubious claim. One real example happened the same year when two children managed to get their mother’s phone bill up to $500 doing the exact same thing. So, the government put a stop to it. 976 talk lines were no longer advertised to children and the 1-900 industry seemed to be next on the chopping block...

Or so you’d think. In actuality, LOADS of novelty phone lines came out, ranging from practical to ridiculous to conspiracy-theory level stuff. Enough boring chit-chat, let’s get to the real party!

The Party Lines:

Today, we’ve got Discord calls in large servers. Pop in, hear the chaos, and eventually get so disgusted or downright awkward that you leave. It turns out this is nothing new and the “party line” was a staple of the late eighties and early nineties.

Pay your exorbitantly high fee, get connected to your “party”, and hear the chaos go down. The concept of a “party line” dates back even longer than 1-900 numbers and originates from when small communities would share a phone line with each other. The other parties could hear your conversation as they shared the line, so the usage of these original party lines went out of practice by the eighties, only to be replaced with the new definition of “party line”.

(For your viewing pleasure: the entire Freak Phone commercial.)

The infamous “Freddie Freaker” puppet originates from one of these so-called party lines. You may have seen his commercial.

(Fun fact: Freddie Freaker was originally rigged up to have his hands movable. The makers of this commercial didn't realize this, so he just t-poses his way through this "performance".)

Character/Celeb Lines:

Fancy a chat with Freddy Krueger? How about Grandpa Munster (as the copyright-dodging “Grampa”). Or, if you’re really bold, the oh-so dreamy New Kids on the Block… Of course, if you had half a brain, you realize that you wouldn’t really be talking to them. But it’s fun to pretend with your parents’ permission. (For $2.95 a minute.)

(He’s not so scary after you take a look at that phone bill.)

(I ho-ho-hope you’re ready for those additional charges.)

Psychic Hotlines:

Now here’s the famous ones. Remember Miss Cleo, the famous Jamaican psychic you saw in those old commercials?

(Notice how they didn’t say how much the additional minutes would be.)

Well, you were probably wise for not calling for your “free” tarot reading. The Psychic Readers Network had two things in mind, that being “keeping people on the phone as long as possible... and... telling people what they wanted to hear”. It’s no surprise that Miss Cleo was a fraud, down to her backstory. The network billed over $1 billion to its “customers” and agreed to cancel $500 million of those bills, with Miss Cleo herself paying a hefty $5 million fine.

But the drama in those commercials! The suspense! It… wasn’t anything like what you’d get in real life.

Strange Lines:

Is Elvis alive? Ten years after his supposed death? You be the judge! Just rack up that phone bill listening to dubious evidence, buy the matching book, and be the Elvis expert of your neighborhood.

Not an Elvis fan? Well, everyone cries. Everyone and their mom has seen this one - 1-900-9099-CRY, the hotline with an incredibly vague commercial that posed more questions than answers. In reality, you’d call and hear a sad story that the previous caller had left. I doubt everyone had the best intentions for this line. Imagine the early trolling that took place!

I know it's just a commercial, but I feel bad...

That’s how they got you. You look at your TV, ask “What the hell is this?, and your curiosity gets the better of you. The next thing you know, you’re desperately trying to make your “wildest fantasies” come true using the power of the telephone.

"Sexy"(?) Lines:

[Again, I must clarify, stay out if you’re under eighteen! Or at work. Or if that mom I mentioned earlier is over your shoulder reading this post with you. Hi, mom.]

This is what most people remember.

(Sure, that's who you're gonna call... Whatever.)

Let’s end with a bang. No pun intended, hopefully. While I’m not into this sort of thing at all, the more “adult” industries had a hell of a time in the 1-900/1-800 industry. Although 1-900 adult lines were blocked in the beginning of the decade, the 1-800 number dominated the nineties... and 2000s... and 2010s... Okay. I’ve seen one of these commercials as recent as early 2022 watching Buzzr early in the morning. (Because three ‘o clock is the perfect time to watch Supermarket Sweep.)

The point is, these things won’t die. They are the dominating (no pun intended AGAIN) force in the “phone call” industry. Late at night watching some crappy little station, or even a cable network, you’d face tens of commercials, all telling you to call their number for the most exorbitant price in the industry. When you called one of these numbers, you’d probably get read a script from some poor employee in a call center who looked nothing like the actresses on TV. I guess that’s why some of these commercials really push the whole “fantasy” thing.

Now that I think of it, maybe it would be fun to pretend to be Santa on the phone instead... That’s more my style! Hey, that number looks oddly familiar...

DAMNIT, SANTA!!

Video Game Tip Lines:

Alright, alright. One more super quick one to make up for the “naughty lines” up there. Remember the Nintendo Power tip line I mentioned above? Or even SEGA’s lines? The big guys weren’t the only ones with tip lines. Here’s a commercial for a line called “Hot Hints” with a horrible cut right before the price because I presume the actor accidentally said “fast, fun, and free”. It’s like something out of a parody.

I haven’t even covered everything here. The 1-900 business was so big that it would take another BLOG’S worth of content to try and get everything down. Of course, this post is also specific to the United States… but I’ve got my eye on Britain and the overabundance of dodgy ringtone commercials and magazine numbers you’d text to get a background for your mobile that says “DADDY’S LITTLE PSYCHO BITCH”.

(I’ll tackle you eventually.)

Until I delve back into these scummy, scammy numbers again, keep looking up! Or THE RABBIT will get you.

- Lcd101