what radio station uses the 733-xxxx number, here is the list that I know so far that uses the 733 number.
Z100 - 733-5100
KISN - 733-KISN
1051 THUE BUZZ - 733-5105
K103 - 733-5103
94.7FM - 733-0947
KGON-733-KGON
any more?

970 AM is 503-733-2970

I look at the similarities in some of these and see that they are from rival Corporations. These look like DNIS numbers the telco's give out in groups to large companies. There must be a service in PDX that these stations all have in common. Probably a voice over IP PBX provider so that there is no long distance from station to station nationwide. I bet PDX can dial in internal extension and reach someone in New York.

503 733 5xxx Seems to belong to qwest.
Were not there problems in the past with radio stations running call in contests and then entire exchanges became so clogged up, nobody could make calls? I think there was effort to put all of the radio stations onto one prefix in order to minimize the jam-ups. Someone out there must know more about this topic. This was back in the time that you could win thousands in cash, a car or a house by being the correct caller, presuming you knew where the missing red v-neck was, or whatever.

There were several cases where contests run by several stations virtually shut down various prefixes. I think you'll see that most, if not all, stations that have listener call-in lines for contests are on the 733 prefix. I seem to remember someone telling me that they really beefed up that switch to handle massive call volumes without tanking the entire system.

Life was so much easier when we didn't have to punch in that DAMN 503 area code.

The phone company has designated 503-733-XXXX as a high volume call circuit. Also Seattle and Spokane have similar numbers as well.

Hmmmm....let me guess is Seattle 206-421-xxxx?

when we didn't have to punch in that DAMN 503 area code.


Damn kids and their cell phones!

Kansas City has the same deal. All radio station phone numbers are 576-7xxx.
For instance:
KCFX- 576-77FX
KCHZ (95.7)- 576-7957
KMXV (93.3)- 576-7933
KQRC (98.9)- 576-7989
and so on and so forth.
It makes it really easy to remember a stations phone number. I would guess many markets do this.

I would think that many of the radio groupies would frequently get the wrong number with all the numeric similarities...and what is the fixation with "7"?

That's just so the jocks can ennunciate the "syeven!" In my opinion, there are no enough pukers on the air these days.

hey I miss the number (name) prefix, IE Circle
for 24, for the local exchange.

You have KNRK's local and 800 number mashed.
733-5470 and 800-777-0947 are the correct numbers.

Seattle was indeed "421", or as Andy Barber used to say "421-KIIIINNNNGGG!!!!!"

In Spokane the number is 509-441-XXXX designation. The phone company calls this high volume circuit a Choke Network.

PORTLAND EXCHANGES 1957

CApitol = 22n-xxxx (2,3,6,7 or 8)
BElmont = 23n-xxxx (2,4,5 or 6)
CHerry = 24n-xxxx (n=4 or 6)
ALpine = 25n-xxxx (n=2,3 or 4)
ATlantic = 28n-xxxx (n=1,2,4,7 or 8)
AVenue = 28n-xxxx (n=6)
BUtler = 28n-xxxx (n=5 or 9)
CYpress = 29n-xxxx (n=2)
PRospect = 77n-xxxx (n=1,4,or 5)

MAyfair = 621-xxxx Burlington
NEptune = 636-xxxx Oswego
NEptune = 638-xxxx Tigard
MErcury = 639-xxxx Tigard
MItchell = 644-xxxx Beaverton
OLive = 654-xxxx Milwaukie/Oak Grove
MOhawk = 665-xxxx Gresham

All other areas are "Long Distance", Dial "0"
(i.e. zero, for Operator. You can't dial direct!)

[Some of the old exchange names are still used today to refer to central office buildings where the switches are.]

Interesting note...KGW's old request line number (224-7522) is now the number for McCormick & Schmick's on SW First in downtown Portland.

Here's a free reverse phone number lookup site. For instance, it says 733-5106 belongs to Entercom.
http://www.whitepages.com/10001/reverse_phone

There was no CA4 or PR7 in 1957? Seattle kept the lettered prefixes for many years after Portland dropped them. I'm not sure how long.

When my family left Seattle in 1965 for Salem,Or our phone # began as AT3...and our new number in Salem which my mom still has today was 7 numbers...no alpha intro...

I recall reading (I think it was in "Telephone: the first hundred years" by John Brooks, 1976) that AT&T expected cities to adapt to all-digit dialing soonest and rural areas to resist. Instead, the opposite happened; small-town and rural users eagerly embraced direct-dial LD, while urban folk clung to familiar neighborhood identification by exchange names.

Seattle and New York City (and I think San Francisco) were among the last to accept the change. (Yup, forward-looking Jet City dragged its feet.) When I arrived in Seattle in 1979 the shift had already occurred but many signs, etc., still showed exchange names, and some people continued to have them printed on their checks into the 80's (i.e., EMerson 5 implied established residency more strongly than 365).

ISTR (reading) that Portland's prefixes were modified to expand from 6 to 7 digits in the late forties, and whole system overhauled in the mid-fifties (so those exchange names Craig listed were, at that time, relatively new). Exploding suburban growth following the shortages of the Korean War caused lags in line and plant expansion until the early sixties; ten-party lines were still common (or all one could get) in the 'burbs through the end of the fifties.

There is a website about this subject (surprise!)

http://ourwebhome.com/TENP/TENproject.html They've got a huge database of prefixes and you can add yours and make comments.

As a kid in Northeast Seattle I lived in "LA" territory, for "Lakeview". My childhood phone number to this day pops in my head as LA4-XXXX, not 524-XXXX, which of course is what it became.

We lived in Glenview, IL from 1960 to 1966 and our phone number was Park4-5703 or PA4-XXXX. Park was the name of the CO.

We moved to Glendale, MO (suburb of St. Louis) in 1966 and our phone number was Woodland2-6270 or WO2-6270. Woodland was the name of the CO there.

They used the name for the local CO in naming the prefixes.

I think it was '68 or '69 before the phone company started promoting numbers over the letters. I still remember people giving their phone numbers using the letter prefix into the mid '70's.

What does your phone number spell?

http://www.phonespell.org/

Just my luck.

I entered my home phone number and this is the response I got;

"Believe it or not, we did not find any interesting mnemonics for 360-604-XXXX. Everything is working fine, this is not a bug. Some numbers just have such odd combinations of letters and/or too many zeroes and ones that they simply do not have good mnemonics. Sorry."

Same with mine, but when I took out the area code I got one "interesting" mnemonic. (Not one that I would ever want to use, however.)

A side thread to this might be area codes. I didn't realize they started way back in '47, but back then mostly used for out of state calls.
All of Southern California had just one area code then, 213. Now I think there are 15-17 codes in the same region.

Only a handful of states remaining with one area code, and when you visit them you immediately notice the odd sound of commercials with only 7-digit phone numbers! A blast from the past, and for those us who have lived in multi-code areas, sound totally alien...like something's missing here...!)

It has more to do with if there are "overlay" area codes. i.e. more than one area code sharing same area (like here we have 503 and 971). If there are not overlay area codes in your area, then 7 digits can work.

Some trivia: The area codes with the lowest #'s for each digit were given to the largest cities and vice versa. Area codes only allowed the 2nd # to be 0 or 1, until 1990ish. Thus 212 for NY and 213 for L.A. and 312 for Chicago. This was to reduce wear and tear on the rotary dialing equipment and to make long distance dialing faster for calls to the larger markets.

But, how do you explain 206 for Washington, and 208 for Idaho? Doesn't seem to meet the original plan. (I personally think there was a little more randomness in this process than has been reported!)

BTW, one of the very early area code splits was in Washington State, with 509 taking over Eastern Washington in 1957! That was very early to split a code...something must have pushed this that is unknown today.

More to the point, area codes were not used as prefixes so you could call long distance within an area code by just dialing "1" and the number.

There is no mention at all of area codes in my 1957 Portland phone directory. So, either they were only accessible to operators, or they were still only on the drawing board.

Another rule was they did not want similar area codes adjecent to each other. 206 and 208 almost seem like exceptions to that too. Was washington in the top 25 population?

Area Code History

Washington was ranked #23 in population in 1950 with about 2.3 million people. Oregon had a 1950 population of about 1.5 million, about what Idaho is today.

Also somewhat interesting, Oregon currently uses 3 area codes, Washington 5, with one additional planned. Idaho still has the original 208 alone.

The purpose of the radio station choke prefix was to prevent the call-in contests from overloading not the destination exchange, but rather the intra-exchange trunks.

For example, if 100 people in each of the Portland area telephone exchanges tried to call me at once, and each exchange only had 50 intra-exchange trunks, then *nobody* would be able to call anywhere outside their home exchange because all the trunks would be full.

With the implementation of the choke prefix, each exchange is setup to only allow a few calls to the choke prefix to go out of the originating exchange, thereby preventing all the trunks from being tied up. In other words, the call volume is being throttled at the originating exchange rather than the destination exchange, preserving intra-exchange trunk capacity.

The shortest-dialpull for commercial or highly populated areas applied to prefixes as well as area codes- note how central Portland has most of the 22x and 23x exchanges. And Salem has 3xx. And Lincoln City has 99x.

The middle digit of the area code originally indicated whether the state was a single-code state(middle digit zero) or multi-code(middle digit 1). Hence 503 for Oregon and 212 for NYC. Of course that logic didn't hold for long.

Tadc, as I mentioned above 509 became Washington's 2nd area code in 1957. So the original plan must have been thrown out by then.

62kgw, interesting the 1957 phone book had no mention of area codes. The system was in place at this time, so I assume you had to call the operator, (as your above post mentions) to place long distance calls in '57. When did this change?
In other words when did direct dial long distance start?

I think it was early 60's, as I can remember my parents calling the operator to make LD calls. Probably phased in over a period of years as the switching equipment needed to be upgraded to allow it. It certainly took more time to upgrade all of the smaller cities and towns.

Yes the '57 Portland phone book specifically says to call operator for ALL long distance calls. Then you have to tell the operator either "station to station" or "person to person". [Or you can ask to do International or Collect]. You must tell the operator he name of the city you are calling. No mention of area codes!
Station to station was cheaper because you get charged if anyone answers, where as Person to person, you specify the name of the person you want to talk to and if that person isn't around, then no-charge! [Its funny explaining this, seems archaic! You don't need to worry about getting voice mail or answering machines! And no robotic auto-attendents when you call a business either!!! Life was simple with rotary dials!]
Example: Portland to San Francisco weekdays first 3 minutes.
Person to person = $1.80
Station to Station = $1.30
Evenings and weekends were less $.
Quite expensive relative to todays standards.

One Perry Mason show has mention of area codes as part of the evidence of one case. They discussed it like it was new thing.

Yes, those long distance prices were VERY high for 1957. When you calculate all the costs involved, it probably is less expensive with a cell phone today! (in real dollars, not adjusted! What other service or product can claim that?).

I was not alive in 1957, but I do remember as a kid in the 60's that my parents often called the operator for assistance. Always a live person on the other end. I also remember calling my parents while in college, collect, in the late 70's. Again, always a human and you would hear the operator ask the receiver if they would accept. Thankfully, my parents always did!

I saw something today on the web that the first direct dialed area code call occurred in 1951. So I think you nailed it, the use of area codes and direct dialing was phased in over many years, unlike today, where technology is very fast and immediate.

One more tidbit about area codes...they have become part of the lexicon, as in "We live in the 509"...meaning "we live in Eastern Washington". Just heard it again tonight on American Idol.."we are looking forward to checking the talent in the 205", (Alabama). I think I remember this also used in rap songs, but not being a rap expert, couldn't tell you what song. And going back a number of years, a Seattle newspaper called their entertainment section "206", obviously before the multiple area codes took over that region.

Back in the 80's there was Tommy Tutone's song Jenny 867-5309. I had heard that because of this song that all the Telco’s had to block it in their CO's. However, after checking;
http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/8675309.asp there is no mention of it being blocked; just that it was a real nuisance to any one that had that number in any area code!

There is a good article in Wikipedia about it; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309

In the late '80's there was rap song, I think it was by a group called A Tribe Called Quest (I found that with a Google search) that said something to the effect of "Call my SkyPager 800-SKYPAGE" and then gave the PIN to over dial. Every time a radio station would play that song so many people called that it would virtually shut down the SkyPage system!

I dialed BAT-CAVE once.

The choker exchanges cause uneven odds of winning phone-in contests. If your prefix area has lots of people who listen to the contest station, you're at a disadvantage compared to listeners calling from prefixes where that station has few listeners.

The old Infinity contest rules promos had to disclaim responsibility for inability to get through due to telephone company factors.

Salem had named exchanges back when Portland did, namely
EMpire 2,3 and 4
JUstice 1 and 5.

What do you get when you call BEechwood 4-5789?

There was a record, i cant remember name now, mid 70's, that had touchtone melody near the beginning. There was various rumors about what happened if you held your phone receiver next to the radio when that record was played.

I always thought people who lived closer to the radio station had better chance of winning because they didnt have to be switched thru all of the interoffice trunks.

"Don't Call Us, We'll Call You" Sugarloaf 1975

"Telephone Line" was similar.

Anybody else here ever have to use a "partyline" phone?

First phone my parents had, in late 50's, we were on an 8 phone hookup.

Details are fuzzy in my head, but our ring was something like 2t longs and a short.

But if you picked up the phone, and someone else was using it, you had to wait.

We had a party line well into the 60's in Seattle, although it was a rare occasion when someone was using it. Think of the privacy issues this must have caused, on the other hand, back then probably most people were polite enough to just hang up and try later. Different era.

Most people formed a habit of listening to see if the line was clear and continue to do so to this day! We were on a 4-party line. We had 2 short rings. If we heard 1 long ring, it was for someone else. I believe if you had a 2-party line, you didn't have to worry about the other ring but still had to check the line. It was a red letter day when we finally got a private line!

In the San Diego metro area (619 and 858 area codes), the prefixes '569' and '570' are used by stations ('570' is primarily used by the Clear Channel stations, which are all housed in one building). Apparently, those two prefixes have been reserved in both A/C's, since a listener can call locally from either A/C to the same number.

2 party lines were very common. The ringer was connected from one wire to ground. From the other wire to ground for the other party. That way only the desired phone ringed.
I recall the day that the 2 party was removed. A telephone man came to the house and opened up the phone and reconnected a couple wires differently. I didn't really understand exactly what he did until much later. Now i think that the reason was that there was shortage of wires in the cables from the central office leading to the neighbornood, which caused the need to have the 2 party lines. Yes, people were politer. It would never "work" today.

My 1984 yellow pages has a chart in the front with the exchance names. No 733 then. Anyone want to guess which station was 227 5753 ?

In the Pink Floyd song from "The Wall" where "Pink" is calling his wife back home and a strange man answers("I have a collect call for Mrs. Floyd, from Mr. Floyd, will you accept the charges from the United States?"), you can clearly hear operator MF tones as the call is put through. Similar to DTMF but a different set of frequencies and only used by operators(and phone phreaks).

And speaking of phone phreaks, I believe that referring to your geographic location by area code first became popular among computer/phone/etc hackers. When I was a teen many of the "warez" groups would identify by area codes.

My grandmother in Victoria BC had a party line well into the 80s if not 90s, but she was the only party on the line! I always wondered why her phone rang "ringring... ringring..." instead of the usual cadence... when I was older I figured out that she must have had a party line that never got switched over to a standard ring (it wasn't "Distinctive Ring" or whatever they call that add-on service).

62, could 227-5753 be KSKD?

Ding Ding Ding Ding !

I love quizzes like this, kind of like the old Reader's Digest Q&A. Have to admit, it took me a number of minutes to match up the numbers to the calls!

Beyond that, this is really an interesting topic. Someone should do a book about how our telephone industry has changed the past 50 years.
I believe I read recently that by 2009, the majority of households will no longer have land-lines, just cell. (I have been cell-only since '01).

And it really is an industry that has reduced consumer costs over the years, (unless abused by too many minutes, etc.). I am paying less for my cell service (in real dollars) today than I did for my land line in 1987, what with additional long distance charges, etc. Perhaps the deregulation of this industry has actually been a benefit to most consumers! Who would hae guessed that would happen?

Another time (earlier in 60's) the telephone man came and replaced the 1940's black desk phone (cloth covered cords, metal dial, etc.) with a brand new beige desk set than even had coiled cord to the handset! The telephone man gave me the old phone to keep. Wow! That was probably a violation of telephone company regulations.
They also put a paper label with your typed phone number behind the dial. How is that for service!

Another tidbit: You were not allowed to mess with the phone at all. But, when mom when out shopping, I got out a screwdriver!

Remember when wall-phones, not the old fashioned ones, but modern 1970's styles, were all the rage? We had one in the kitchen, (the sell being how it would take up less space). How about "princess phones", those sleek, new phones with softened edges? I wanna say about '70, might be earlier. I owned, or I guess at the time, rented, the old ATT classic desk phone and used it well into the 80's. Those things were tanks, almost indestructible...drop it, throw it, try to blow it up...no luck, it would still work! And no choice of ring-tones...just the basic ATT standard ring...strong, loud, and got your attention! (I write this today as I must have heard 10 different ringtones go off at my place of employment...anyone else annoyed by those?

The 60's phone had a thumbwheel on the bottom that adjusted the volume of the ringer. It was a purely mechanical adjustment (moved one of the 2 bells closer/farther to/from the clapper!).
On the back of the '57 phone directory is picture of a yellow phone mounted the kitchen wall, with woman talking on it. It mentions that colors are available for every room.

No one owned their own phone and they were meant to last forever because the phone company didn't want to send someone to your house just to replace the phone.

I, too remember the thumbwheel to adjust volume on 1960's-70's phones....but was it just me or the difference between high and low was barely noticeable.

The one thing that I do remember fondly is that when you picked up the phone on those old land-based lines, the signal was crystal clear, loud, and understandable. Today's cell users would envy that signal! Perhaps this will be the next step in cell tech, but somthing tells me the "cool" features of today's cell phones will have a higher priority than good, quality signals. That's too bad.

Paul, I'm afraid there's no going back to that quality. Two reasons calls cost so much more then were (1) honest-to-goodness copper, analog connerctions from end-to-end, and (2) regulations on things like levels and signal-to-noise ratio. I'm afraid both are gone forever.

I'm astonished at the horrendous audio on phones today, and the fact that people put up with it, especially businesses. At least once a week, I get left a voicemail that's so garbled I can't understand the name or number.

Many radio talk shows used to have screeners keep bad-sounding calls off ther air, but today, you'd be rejecting a majority of callers.

Sadly, HD will do the same thing to radio. Historians will one day note that consumer audio quality reached its pinnacle about 1980, when audiophile Japanese vinyl pressings in rice-paper sleeves were popular, and reasonably-priced home stereos had awesome specs. CDs improved signal-to-noise ratio, but were below the quality of good analog media in every other way, and it's all been downhill from there.
XM, Sirius, HD, even Starguide and ISDN have annoying artifacts, and MP3s are the final insult.

The only place left where digital really means "better" is in movie soundtracks and high-end audiophile recordings, both done at 24 bits or higher resolution, and 96K sampling rates.

It's too bad, too, because even cheap consumer stuff has phenomenal capability. If you have a computer less than two years old with audio software, record a $99 condenser mic in 24-bit/44100, and listen back uncompressed through good speakers. Incredible!

Who knows, we might see a return to quality content, produced by smaller shops.

All the DRM, plus the drive to seriously reduce cost, leaves the majors at a disadvantage in the area of pure impact.

KUPL-733-5000
Khits 733-5733

My parents house burned down in 1964, pretty much everything lost, the ATT phone we had melted a lot, but it still worked.

Until the FCC degegulated the phone system, you couldnt, (at least wern't supposed to) hook up anything to the phone lines, that didnt come from AT&T.

Phone company made a lot of money from those phones, the standard lease rate was $5.00 per month. Take that times every phone in the country.

"Degegulated"

Deregulation
Radio
Portland Taxi Cabs
Phone Company

Has only weakened those industries IMHO.

Be very careful if you take a Cab in PDX as with the Deregulation any joe can slap a cab sign on whatever Jalopy he wants. Poor maintenance and million mile cars are not a good combination. Radio Cab is pretty decent or at least used to be!

For basic no-frills cell phone service that allows calls to be made almost anywhere at no additional charge, I believe prices are lower today than 40 years ago when you combine your old phone bill with your old long distance bill.
Notice I said, "no-frills", which is all you got back then! If one of the goals of de-reg is lower prices, I think the phone companies have succeeded. However, today there are more opportunities to "add-on" to your service, and that is where the profit is being made today. (Ironically, I just finished doing a remote for a cellular company a couple of hours ago! Perhaps I have been brainwashed!!!)

Look up data about any phone number, including your own: NALENND Online

pdxmitch, I just entered my childhood phone number and it brought up a lot of statistics and numbers I didn't really understand, but what WAS interesting is it spelled out the old 1960's alpha-exchange identifier. Makes me wonder if these are still being used inside the industry.

Paul, which field on the list is the alpha-exchange identifier? (as in, what does it say in bold to the left of the identifier?)

Just checked it again..."central office" was to the left. (Then listed an obscure address in my former hometown?) I really have no idea what any of this stuff means...just found it curious that my old alpha-prefix was spelled out on this site. Perhaps because this was a longtime number it was retired with that alpha-prefix. R.I.P.!

We still have 2 rotary dial phones hard-wired into our house, 1 wall, 1 desk. They always work if the power goes out, and my nieces and nephews think they're the coolest, after I showed them how to dial a call.

Mrs., COOL! Almost like teaching 5-year olds how to dial in the 60's! Today it is is foreign and unknown to most under 25!

Hey, there's an alphanumeric code for my phone number, too! If people are too young to know how this works, here's a little primer. Take the Oregonian's old Inside Line number, 503-225-5555. The first two numbers of the prefix ("22") would be represented by the first two letters of a word. The NALENND database shows that the word is CAPITAL (or "CA"). So the number would be referred to as CAPITAL 5-5555. TriMet's info line, 503-238-RIDE would have been referred to as BELMONT 8-7433. MovieFone's 503-777-FILM would have been PROSPECT 7-3456. The Glenn Miller song Pennsylvania 6-500 literally referred to PENNSYLVANIA 6-500, or 212-736-5000, still the number for the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York.

Interestingly, the 733 numbers we're talking about don't have a matching alphanumeric code. Instead, they're listed as CAPITAL, the same as the old Oregonian Inside Line number and any other 22x-xxxx number. The address for this particular prefix's central office is 735 SW Stark, an office building that, among other things, houses Portland's UFO museum.

And here's a custom Google search that shows all websites featuring a phone number with the 503-733 area code/prefix combination. Certainly a lot of radio representation there, though not exclusively so.

Actually, a lot of kids may be familiar with a rotary dial because public schools in Portland still have rotary phones for room-to-room communication.

When entering my parent's longtime number, the alphnumeric DIamond does not show anywhere in the results, probably because our area code was changed from 503 to 541.

There seems to be inconsistancies with the Alpha prefixs and the exchange names. Perhaps for C.O. buildings that had several different alpha prefixs, only one got "saved", or even none, if they usually called it the 10th St office or somthing like that.
Harold is an office name that did not relate to its alpha prefix.

"The Glenn Miller song Pennsylvania 6-500 literally referred to PENNSYLVANIA 6-500"

Close. It's Pennsylvania 6-5000. All together now, Pennsylvania six-five-oh-oh-oh. Sing on.

As I recall, the 733 prefix just for radio stations in Portland began when KGW had a contest going and there were so many callers to their old number (225)that it brought the phone system down in downtown Portland. After that, the phone company (probably Northwest Bell) at that time came up with the the 733 prefix. I don't recall the year, but it was back when KGW was pulling double numbers.

Pacific Northwest Bell (pre-Qwest, pre US-West).
Early 80's? Would that have been due to the V-neck Napper?

Listening to the KISN&KGW1972 aircheck compilation,I was amused to hear (at 20:54): "Kaay-Geee-W, with Phil Harper, playing requests like crazy. Something you want to hear this afternoon? Call me now, at BAG-SLAB, or 224-7522, whichever comes to mind, and I'll see what I can do for you."

That was Phil at his typical best.

Gosh, he's REALLY missed...

Phil Harper...an under-rated talent to be sure. He brought a certain dry wit to KGW and KING that probably was misunderstood by the top-40 audience. But, gawd he could be funny, and he had one of the "classic" voices of our industry.
R.I.P., Phil.