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Fannish Hotlines

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This article is about the long-distance phone numbers. You may be looking for the Stargate Atlantis story, The Hotline.
Synonyms:
See also: Phone Tree, Fandom and Profit
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Hotlines are long-distance phone numbers which allow people to listen to pre-recorded messages.

A screenshot from television commercial hawking Hulk Hogan's 1-900 number ad. It included a game called "Pin the Champ" that allowed fans to "wrestle" opponents by pressing buttons on their phones to perform moves. The recordings also touted tips on training, vitamins, and offered simple story lines.

Back before cell phones, long-distance callers were charged by the minute depending on where they lived and what time of the day the call was placed. Long distance phone calls were very expensive, and the charges on a 1-900 call were even more expensive than regular long distance calls.

The 1-900 numbers covered a wide variety of topics such as sex and religion, and yes, fans and fandom.

While there were a handful of free fannish 1-800 numbers, the vast majority of these hotlines were 1-900 numbers. Some 1-900 numbers were run by non-fannish entrepreneurs, some by celebrities, and some by fans

Before the internet, information about fans' objects of affection were not as readily available as they are today. Fans have always had a voracious thirst to know more about their shows and films, pop stars and bands, and celebrity news, and these hotlines offered information fans wanted. Fannish hotlines, essentially commercials, provided fans with information about movie updates, messages from celebrities, convention news, and more. Hotlines were a way to monetize fan devotion, a platform for celebrities and franchises to control the message and grow their fanbase, to make fans feel like they were in the loop and were privy to insider information, to voice their opinions, and most importantly, for companies and celebrities to make money.

Calling a hotline would incur a hefty fee on one's phone bill, a flat fee for the initial call and then additional smaller charges by the minute. The longer fans stayed on the line, the bigger the bill, which meant the hotline provider had every incentive to keep fans listening as long as possible with loops, filler, promises, contests [1] games, teasers, sloooooow talking [2] and in some cases, tiny on-going stories.

Hotlines almost always included the vague statement that people "under 18 years old must get permission," and the more jocular, "Kids, get permission from your parents first!" This, of course, was something children often ignored, and for some, a source of family strife.

Countries outside the United States also had their versions of 1-900.

1-900 Numbers Started With Television News

The 1-900 technology was first used in October 1980. After the Reagan-Carter presidential debate, ABC's Nightline asked viewers to call in and vote for a winner. The phone call cost 50 cents, and 566,170 people dialed in.[3]

Five years later, AT&T allowed content providers the opportunity to earn money from their 1-900 numbers. An industry was born.

Companies like Advanced Telecom Services made a fortune creating and running 1-900 numbers for celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and more. Want the latest trade rumors about the New York Yankees? There was a number for that. Need a hint on today's crossword? There was a number for that. Want to hear the voice of Michael J. Fox? There was a number for that.

Celebrities got a cut of the cash, which made them even more popular with pop stars. In the years between 1987 and the rise of the internet in the mid-1990s, the 1-900 flourished. These were the precursors to YouTube, Reddit subthreads and social media.[4]

Enter "Larry the Lobster"

After the evening television news in 1980, agencies began setting up "pulse polls" for fans to use 1-900 numbers to "vote" for a certain outcome, such as political predictions, and these results would be displayed live on the screen. These calls cost fifty cents each.

In 1982, the producers of Saturday Night Live decided to spoof these news agencies. It set up a pulse poll for the sketch "Larry the Lobster", featuring Eddie Murphy. In it, Murphy threatened to kill a large lobster on-screen. The comedy sketch drew nearly 500,000 calls, with fans voting "yes, kill Larry" and "no, don't kill Larry." AT&T and the producers of SNL split the profits of nearly $250,000. [5]

The text of that pulse poll:

“You want to save Larry the Lobster,” Murphy told the viewers, “dial 1-900-720-1808. If you want to kill him, dial 1-900-720-1909. Now, unless you call in to save him, we’re going to boil Larry’s little butt right here on national television…The phone company is going to charge you 50 cents, but isn’t it worth 50 cents to save Larry’s life? Or look at it this way: Isn’t it worth half a buck to see us boil Larry on TV?”

In the end... did Larry live? You sure you want to know? [6]

An Early Star Wars Hotline

Craig Miller, a very early publicity employee with Lucasfilm, was responsible for creating the 1-800-521-1980 telephone hotline for The Empire Strikes Back. It allowed fans to call up to receive more information about the movies and characters. This "accidentally shut down the state of Illinois’ phone system." [7]

This 1-800 number did not cost fans money to use.

The hotline included short messages from five of the characters: Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, Han Solo, C-3PO and Darth Vader.

In September 1980, fan Tracy Christensen, included the transcripts of four out of five of these messages for fans in her zine, Millennium: "For those of you who never managed to get through to that very busy Star Wars hotline and hear the taped phone messages of our heroes." Perhaps Christensen, who thanked Nancy and Tracy Duncan in the zine's editorial, left off Leia's statement either in agreement or deference to the Duncan sisters' famously virulent anti-Leia views?

This is the transcript for the one by Luke Skywalker:

Tatooine was just a big ball of dust until Artoo and Threepio showed up. But since then my life hasn't been the same -- from a moisture farmer on a remote desert planet to a leader of the Rebellion fighting for freedom throughout the galaxy. But now the Rebellion faces even greater odds, and I must be ready. I must follow Ben Kenobi's teachings and learn more about the powers of the Force in becoming a Jedi Knight if I'm going to be prepared for a confrontation with Darth Vader. See it, when The Empire Strikes Back.

From a 2016 article about Craig Miller:

Miller remembers one of his better publicity coups, setting up an 800 number (1-800-521-1980, the film’s release date) that allowed fans to call in before Empire and hear little clues about the upcoming sequel, as recited by Luke, Leia, Han Solo, C-3PO and Darth Vader.

“There was no advertising; we talked about it at conventions, and Starlog ran a two paragraph announcement of it,” Miller recalled. “And with just that, we completely swamped the 800 system.”

AT&T forced Lucasfilm to buy more phone lines, cease their advertising (easy, since they weren’t doing any) [8] and apologize to the public and other 800-number users. “That was great because now it was being carried all over the world that we were apologizing that Star Wars fans were so enthusiastic about seeing Empire that they swamped AT&T,” Miller said, laughing. [9]

  • from Millennium, each phone message ended with the character telling fans they could find out more by going to the movie: C-3PO said: "You'll just have to see it for yourselves when The Empire Strikes Back comes to a theater near you on May 21st. 1989."

    from Millennium, each phone message ended with the character telling fans they could find out more by going to the movie: C-3PO said: "You'll just have to see it for yourselves when The Empire Strikes Back comes to a theater near you on May 21st. 1989."

  • from Millennium

    from Millennium

Get Personal Time with Pop Stars, Join Junior Vampire Clubs, Buy He-Man Toys, Wrestle Opponents With Your Fingers, and More!

screenshot from YouTube the 1989 television commercial for Tiffany

An example of a 1-900 shill from the pop singer, Tiffany:

Hi, this is Tiffany, and I'm so excited you can reach me now on my private phone line. Just call 1-900-909-TIFF. I have so many things I'd like to tell you. You're my friend, so call me at 1-900-909-TIFF, and if you're one of my lucky callers, you get to talk to me live one-on-one. Remember my number, 1-900-909-TIFF. Under 18? Get permission before calling. $2 first minute, 45 cents each additional minute. Call me, okay? [10]

a print ad for the WCW Wrestling Hotline: "Daily Update" (a new message every day), Pin the Champ ("Have you got what it takes to go head to head with the superstars of WCW? Here's your chance to find out. Just call and brawl with the hottest interactive wrestling game in the world!"), "WCW Vote Line" ("Voice your opinion! Get something off your chest! Vote on the current hot World Championship Wrestling topics. This is the place for the fans to let their voices be heard")

Some other examples:

"Kids, Get Permission from Your Parents First"

The ads for fannish hotlines were required to say a variation of "Kids, get permission from your parents first." This, however, did not stop many children from calling and racking up huge bills to hear information about their favorite shows.

1-900 hotlines were essentially, child traps.

There are many, many comments about the humiliation, strife, punishments [11], and stress these unauthorized calls created in many families.

Some fan recollections:

Me and my two brothers called and made a huge bill. My sweet parents, they had to pay. We got in trouble and couldn't use the phone anymore. 👦👩👨 [12]

I called this number when I was a kid. What the commercial doesn't say about "A new story every day" is that it was actually a long ongoing multiparter. You HAD to call the next day to get the next bit. I wracked up a huge bill for my parents. That was a lesson learned...[13]

I was a little kid but loved Tales from the Crypt and was a classic film buff in the making. One year HBO had a Cryptkeeper 1-900 line where you would "match wits" with the Cryptkeeper about old horror movies.

I still remember the utter humiliation of my parents getting a $300+ phone bill and sitting me down to have a "talk" and how long it took to convince them it was for the Cryptkeeper and not porn or psychics.

It was a recorded sequence that had different pre-recorded responses based on what answers you gave to the trivia questions- of course the more correct answers you knew the longer it kept going...I was on it for hours at a time. [14]

When I was in 4th or 5th grade, mid 80's, I called the WWF wrestling hotline, like every day for a few weeks til the phone bill came. I had to mow a lot of lawns to pay it off.... It was just Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan saying who they were gonna beat next week (sometimes Macho Man)... [I had to pay] back $100-150 in mid 80s 5th grader money![15]

I was maybe 13-14. I called the hot women of wrestling line. It was just a prerecorded bunch of incoherent nonsense. I listened for a few minutes then hung up. Couldn’t make anything out of it. It was definitely not worth the punishment and grief I got from my parents when they got a $XX phone bill (don’t remember how much but it was clearly noticeable. My mom tried to call and argue the bill…and that how she learned what I had done. [16]

My babysitter called the Alvin and Chipmunks hotline for me all they did was play a recording. I jus[t] remembered my mom being so mad when she got the phone bill never saw that babysitter again. [17]

I called [the Hulk Hogan 1-900] back in 1995, ran up a phone bill of over 800 dollars. Mom sure wasn't happy with me. I remember her walking in the house with the phone bill and it was as thick as a phone book. [18]

Oh man. I got in big trouble racking up charges on the Alyssa Milano hotline. I don’t remember much, but there was a bunch of filler up front to keep you on the line as long as possible. [19]

Dial-a-Beast vs Dial-the-Pope

Dial-a-Best was a for-profit Beauty and the Beast (TV) hotline where fans could call a phone number and listen to letters written by Ron Koslow and read by Ron Perlman as he portrayed the character of Vincent Wells.

"Dial-a-Beast" began the fall of 1991, when B&B became generally available for syndication, after it had had a year's run on the Family Channel first.

The 900 telephone number functioned just over 8 weeks and ended on November 17th, 1991, due to changing FCC regulations, but also competition from the Pope:

After a run of 8 telephone messages starring on Perlman as the voice of Vincent, Republic Pictures has withdrawn its dial-a-beast 900 number. Whether it served to help the promotional effort isn't going to be clear.

As has become a tradition with all things related to "Beauty and the Beast," Murphy's law continued to prevail. Pre-publicity faltered in the wake of some strange competition, apparently the Roman Catholic faith had a similar idea, i.e. a dial-the-Pope 900 number! How's that for competition? Even worse, within its first week, the FCC and some state governments instituted new rulings regarding both the advertising and availability of 900 numbers -- which drastically affected the project. In some places either the number could not be advertised, or could not be reached at all. Fans in those places were not happy campers. [20]

Hotlines as Legal Protection for BNFs and Clubs

The events presented in the third season of Beauty and the Beast (TV) caused a lot of fannish turmoil, rumors, and controversy. In 1991, one BNF explained that hotlines were now a necessity for legal protection, as they were a platform to set the record straight:

If you heard or saw unauthorized announcements made on behalf of either "South of Oz" or "MasqueCon" — to the extent that one or the other had been canceled, or their celebrities weren't coming, or that their membership quotas had been filled to capacity — you may well be a witness to something legally actionable.

The creation of rumours to the effect that monies collected for a charity might have been embezzled by a con committee falls under that same heading. (In this case the charity itself had to come to the defense of the committee so falsely accused!) because of this kind of vindictive, thoughtless behavior, no convention can now afford to be without a hotline phone number (wary convention-goers have come to expect one), nor can conventions afford to be without legal counsel on retainer, and that is money spent out of charity's pocket. [21]

Celebrities Promoted Non-Fannish Charities

Fans and charity donations and activism have gone hand-in-hand since the beginning of organized fandom.

Conventions hosted blood drives, and cons and fan clubs usually had a chosen charity in which they participated with donations of time, energy, and money. One early, long-running charity was UNICEF which was hawked by Leonard Nimoy.

While not nearly as common, some celebrities, beginning in the early 1990s, encouraged fans to call 1-900 numbers to support organizations the celebrity felt worthwhile.

From a 1991 shill by Roy Dotrice in support of the "Sea Shepherd Conservation Society":

[This charity's] mission is to save as many marine birds and animals as possible from the devastation of the oil spills and other hazards of the Gulf War. Their brave efforts, going into the midst of this war zone, fills me, and I hope our Beauty and the Beast fans, with tremendous admiration.

The Sea Shepherd Society is asking for ten dollar ($10) donations to help support this lifesaving effort. I have just recorded a commentary on this mission which will be updated from time to time with further details of their exploits in the Gulf. If any of my Tunnel Family had though of sending me a Father’s Day card, I would bless them if instead they would come together with a few other friends and perhaps pledge a donation to this very worthwhile cause. If you wish, please add an inscription: Donated by Friends of 'Father', Beauty and the Beast.

To hear my commentary, pledge your donation and to get more details, please call 1-900-420-8240. My love and thanks to all.

Bless you, Roy Dotrice/’Father’ [22]

Because Dotrice's message was not entirely clear regarding charges, the editor of the zine this blurb was printed included:

Addendum! You will be billed $10.00 for calling the 900 number, each time you call. [23]

The initial phone call cost the fan $10.00, and this was billed later by AT&T on the monthly paper bill that arrived in the mail. During the phone call, the fan caller was asked to donate at least another ten bucks, this amount presumably going to the charity. Fans wanting to hear Dotrice's later updates in his dulcet tones would have to start the whole cycle over again which, of course, was the idea. [24]

Further Reading

References

  1. ^ a 1992 chaotic word salad flyer for TrekCon, which oddly, used a different area code: "For TrekCon 92 attendees. Prizes drawing(s) inc!. FREE cameras & film - compliments of Eastman Kodak Company. Guests entered to win an Orlando/EPCOT/DisWorld U. Studios or Cancun trip, incl air & accom. (Totally legit.) 24-hr hotline: (202) 452-7425. Updated bi-monthly. Leave 30-sec mesg (name\addr\ph)."
  2. ^ "I called it up once or twice and wracked up a bill to! All i remember was Jim Ross talking as slow as a robot saying something like "wel....come....to.....the....official....WWF....Superstar....hotline.....(long pause)...Please....note.....if...you.....are....under.....18 years.....of...age..." and so on.....Just that opening exchange must have cost a fortune!" -- Did anyone ever call the WWF/WCW 1-900 Hotline #'s (2010)
  3. ^ This was a total of $283,085.00, which would be about $1,164,488.00 in 2025.
  4. ^ Back in the '80s, people called 1-900 numbers to meet celebs, eavesdrop on NASA and cry; archive link (Aug 3, 2017)
  5. ^ from The Rise and Fall of the 1-900 Number
  6. ^ At the end of the Larry the Lobster episode of Saturday Night Live, the results of the dial-in poll were announced. A vote count of 239,096 to 227,452 said Larry would live. A week later, on the next episode of Saturday Night Live, Eddie Murphy described receiving a racist letter from a fan about seafood and Black people. He addressed this non-fan: “First of all, Jeanne, my word is bond, okay? And I did say last week that I was gonna let Larry the Lobster live. But then I received this racist letter from you, and I had a change of mind.” He then reached for a prepared plate of boiled lobster and ate it, staring into the camera. That lobster was supposedly Larry. - The Rise and Fall of the 1-900 Number; archive link by Shaun Raviv (Oct 4, 2016)
  7. ^ the Amazon description of "Star Wars Memories: My Time In The (Death Star) Trenches
  8. ^ Miller's statement that these recordings were doing any advertising is very disingenuous. Yes, of course they were, and on several levels. If nothing else, each phone message ended with the character telling fans they could find out more by going to the movie; C-3PO said: "You'll just have to see it for yourselves when The Empire Strikes Back comes to a theater near you on May 21st. 1989."
  9. ^ from "Boba Fett was originally supposed to be the main villain in Return of the Jedi". Consequences of Sound by Collin Brennan (May 04, 2016)
  10. ^ from Tiffany - 1-900 Commercial
  11. ^ So, so many fans recounted spankings, which are not included in this article!
  12. ^ 80's Masters of the Universe Hotline Commercial (2018)
  13. ^ 80's Masters of the Universe Hotline Commercial (2020)
  14. ^ from JacquieTorrance, Did anyone happen to call a 1-900 number in the 80s? If so, what was your experience? (2024)
  15. ^ from Artistic-Raspberry-9, Did anyone happen to call a 1-900 number in the 80s? If so, what was your experience? (2024)
  16. ^ from deepblue74us1, Did anyone happen to call a 1-900 number in the 80s? If so, what was your experience? (2024)
  17. ^ from oftenliedto, Did anyone happen to call a 1-900 number in the 80s? If so, what was your experience? (2024)
  18. ^ from [1] (2022)
  19. ^ from portagenaybur, Did anyone happen to call a 1-900 number in the 80s? If so, what was your experience? (2024)
  20. ^ from Stephanie Wiltse in Pipeline (v.4 n.8/9 Fall 1991)
  21. ^ from Pipeline v.4 n.8/9
  22. ^ from Dancing Lights v.2 n.2 (May 1991)
  23. ^ from Dancing Lights v.2 n.2 (May 1991)
  24. ^ Note: $10 in 1991 was equivalent in purchasing power to about $23.32 in 2025.
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