Content area
Full Text
ROBERT CONLEY: Continuing on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, a whole new way of getting news. This particular way might be called dial a phone. There's a list that's easily available in Washington of all sorts of organizations - public, private - that have special telephone numbers that you can just ring up and find out what the given message of the day is from that particular organization. Now, one of them is say, the Republican National Committee. Well, I can just pick up the telephone here and dial it. But to go through the whole list would take practically a day, and that's just about what our reporter Jim Russell did as he ferreted out, one after the other, number after number, on dials and pushbutton phones, all sorts of prerecorded messages. You can, as he did, dial a horoscope, dial a prayer, dial a news report, dial a stock report, dial a story and even dial a birdwatchers' report. This is how the day went for our man Jim Russell.
JIM RUSSELL: When most people think of automatic recordings, the kind they can hear on their telephones, they think of the time.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUTOMATED SPEAKING CLOCK)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: At the tone, the time will be 11:35.
JIM RUSSELL: Or, they think of the weather.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUTOMATED C AND P WEATHER FORECAST)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Good morning. The C and P Telephone Company presents the latest weather forecast. 11 a.m., temperature, 56 degrees.
JIM RUSSELL: Sometimes they think of doctor's offices.
(SOUNDBITE OF AUTOMATED DOCTOR'S OFFICE RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #3: Hello. This is Dr. Ungleider's(ph) office. We're sorry, there's no one here at the moment. The doctor will be in at 8:45 in the morning. However, please leave us your name and telephone number and reason for your call. If this is an emergency, please state your problem and the doctor will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you for calling. Begin talking now.
JIM RUSSELL: Most people have had some kind of frustration with that particular kind of automatic answering service. Then too, there's another kind of automatic recording and that is the nationwide phenomena called Dial-A-Prayer.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIAL-A-PRAYER)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Prayer is a burden of a sigh,...