Commentary
Whatever might the Orient Express, trolley cars and the new phone book have in common?
All such were intentionally neglected into the ground by their corporate overlords.
America’s rapacious railroads weren’t making enough money on their passenger lines, so they intentionally made the service so bad that people stopped using it. Thus advised my Uncle John who was once the Southern Pacific Railroad agent in Reno.
They kept the passenger business, he told me, but not on the rails.
Which is why Greyhound bus depots began popping up next to railroad stations. They retained the passenger revenue without all those posh dining and sleeping car accommodations staffed by A. Philip Randolph’s union members.
Mass transit suffered a similar corporate assassination. After WW2, Los Angeles enjoyed a world class trolley system. You could dwell in the burgeoning sprawl without needing a car, a situation that Detroit would not allow to continue.
So automakers, led by General Motors, bought up mass transit lines and made the service so bad that people stopped using them. What to do with all those cable car rights-of-way? Why, build freeways, of course. Which means people would need automobiles. Lots and lots of them. (Cough-hack-wheeze.)
Now that L.A. is so choked with bad air and gridlocked roads, a new idea has manifested: cable cars. Efficient, cheaper, cleaner. But where to lay the tracks? Why, on freeway rights-of-way, of course. Back to the future.
Alas, the venerable telephone directory is approaching the fate of the freeway Dodo bird.
In 2010, the AT&T Reno-Sparks-Washoe phone book was over two inches thick. The one which hit the deck this month measures less than half an inch.
Researching this story, I talked to a young woman answering the phones at a community organization focused on helping senior citizens. “I haven’t opened a phone book in 20 years,” she exclaimed.
As with once-glamorous rail passenger service and mass transit, AT&T and its minions have run the enterprise into the ground. Print media have indeed suffered in the age of the Internet but from top to bottom they have proven that you can’t cut your way to prosperity.
I started flogging the phone company half a century ago when I advised a Republican legislative candidate to adopt a consumer dimension. Nevada Bell was planning to start charging for phone number information calls, a service for which customers were already paying. They backed down thanks to the media attention but eventually made it so expensive that AT&T finally announced last January that the service would cease.
Maddeningly, their obituary also states “Good to know: You’ll still be able to obtain Operator and Directory Assistance services through traditional home phone service at pay-per-use rates.”
Recently, that could be around $2 a call. No current rates are available. Confusing, eh wot?
Exactly the point.
This sad summary of consumer abuse was sparked by a call to KTVN TV-2’s talk line from a Sparks woman who had not received her new directory.
“Us senior citizens that don’t have cell phones, that don’t have computers, when are we going to get a phone book? I just can’t imagine what the holdup is,” she said.
TV-2 anchor Ryan Canaday referred her to “The Real Yellow Pages” phone number. She will be disappointed.
Whole categories of services have disappeared. Wide swaths of information that used to generate heavy profits are missing. Try to find a union or a TV station in the Yellow Pages. The only listing under “Television Stations and Broadcasting Companies” is (drum roll, please) little ole me, my old talk show number for Barbwire.TV.
Which explains why I get so many phone calls, especially from senior citizens, looking to call a TV or radio station. Just five radio and one TV station appear in the new white pages.
About 20 years ago, AT&T pulled a Southern Pacific, reducing white page listings to microscopic. The Reno Gazette-Journal trashed them and demanded re-printing a book that people could read. Editor Bruce Bledsoe’s righteous rage went unheeded, of course.
A few years ago, the amazing shrinking phone book stopped including residential listings at all. AT&T’s contractor published a thin supplement in tiny type that ratepayers could order. If they knew about it. Even that was eliminated just before the pandemic — when it would be most needed.
The 2010 directory contained 505 white pages, followed by 1,118 Yellow Pages. Reno-Sparks was much smaller before Tesla was given $1.3 billion in taxpayer corporate welfare money to plop down here and make us pothole-wealthy.
The 2018 residential booklet carried all of 21 pages of little listings.
I asked AT&T how I might obtain the white pages database. They told me that’s not their department. I called the “Real Yellow Pages” contractor and they said the same thing. Catch 22.
Non-internet capable seniors (or the disabled or disadvantaged) trying to find necessary services have nowhere to turn.
Worse, many basic institutions are now absent from the phone book altogether. According the 2023 edition, the University of Nevada-Reno, Washoe County and the cities of Reno and Sparks have no phone service. Ditto Renown and St. Mary’s hospitals. The 2010 phone book carried 32 upfront pages of useful community information before the paid listings.
According to a 2022 UNLV study, 10.7 percent of Washoe County’s 65-plus population has no computer access. (I had no luck finding cell-phone stats.)
Unfortunately, the Nevada Public Utilities Commission is pretty much out of telephone regulation. I’m looking into filing a petition with the Federal Communications Commission. Closer to home, there may be a consumer fraud issue given the fact that people allow publication of their phone numbers with an expectation that others will be able to reach them. Without a published book, they are paying for a service they don’t receive.
Governments are spending taxpayer money for phone services which should be publicly available by all means possible. Currently, only people with Internet capability or those willing to pay for information calls, can find their public servants.
A phone book shot full of holes is not just a nuisance, it’s a ratepayer ripoff that can cost lives. Stay tuned.
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com and CONSUMERCOALITIONV.org/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
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