The Ask President Carter 1-900 Number (1977)
This Day in Esoteric Political History
Jody Avirgan & Radiotopia
4.6 • 982 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s March 5th. This day in 1977, President Jimmy Carter and CBS’s Walter Cronkite took phone calls, unfiltered, from Americans all over the country who had dialed into 1-900-242-9611.
Jody, Niki, and Kellie discuss what happened during the Dial-A-President experiment, the logistics of how it all came together, and how it serves as a perfect snapshot of the era.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia. |
| 0:07.0 | My name is Jody Avergan. |
| 0:09.0 | This day, March 1977, President Jimmy Carter sat down at his desk in the Oval Office |
| 0:18.2 | across from broadcaster Walter Cronkite in front of a speaker which was connected to a telephone. And what did Jimmy do? |
| 0:24.8 | Well live on TV he took phone calls from regular Americans for two hours. Nine million |
| 0:31.7 | phone calls got made to the president in that window. |
| 0:34.0 | He only had time to get to a dozen or so, but they were not really screened in advance and it was this remarkable moment of unfiltered access and a really wide range of questions and interactions. |
| 0:45.3 | In fact, I would argue that if you wanted the most efficient snapshot of American political life |
| 0:51.0 | in this period, 1977, your best bet would just be to revisit |
| 0:54.8 | the Dial of President broadcast on March 5th, 1977 because there is just |
| 0:59.2 | everything in American politics jammed into that Q&A unfiltered with the president and Walter Cronkite. |
| 1:05.1 | So let's do that. |
| 1:06.2 | Let's get that snapshot. |
| 1:07.1 | Let's talk about that dialogue president broadcast here as always Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and |
| 1:11.9 | Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley. |
| 1:13.6 | Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there. The number 900 242. 1611. |
| 1:20.3 | 900 numbers. First off it it doesn't like, you know, mean something like 900 dial Jimmy or whatever. |
| 1:27.6 | It's just a number. |
| 1:29.1 | But nine hundred numbers are not really out in the ether anymore and if they are they kind of have a |
| 1:32.8 | CD reputation. I was going to say aren't those sex numbers? |
| 1:36.1 | I was expecting something a little spicier than Jimmy Carter and Walter Cronkite. |
| 1:40.1 | Yeah. Someone like Miss Dyon try to call a sex line and then they get the present. |
... |
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