Dallas-based SuperMedia, which publishes Verizon's telephone directories, has instead focused on its yellow pages and paid advertising listings, and their online equivalents. by Gallup shows that between 20, the percentage of households relying on stand-alone residential white pages fell from 25 percent to 11 percent. The number of traditional land lines has been declining for the better part of the decade, and now are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10 percent each year, according to company financial reports.Īnd a survey conducted for SuperMedia Inc. That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls.įewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: more people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren't included in the listings more listings are available online and mobile phones and caller ID systems on land lines can store a large number of frequently called numbers. The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. It also can't hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia. ![]() ![]() Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. "Anybody who doesn't have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway," joked Robert Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University. Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators. In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.'s request to quit distributing residential white pages. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.RICHMOND, Va. - What's black and white and read all over? Not the white pages, which is why regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans' kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. As for AT&T, the nation's largest phone company, it supports, at least in Florida and some other parts of the country, requiring customers to opt in to get the paper phonebook.Ĭopyright © 2009 NPR. NOGUCHI: Sure search engines and look-up sites like stand to benefit if consumers don't automatically get a book thrown on their doorstep, but Lusk says the change would also save five to 10 million trees a year, and it would save taxpayers millions in recycling costs. JOHN LUSK (Vice President, ): There's no reason why we should be forced to print and deliver these phonebooks to individuals when there are other options out there. John Lusk is vice president of marketing for the Web version of the White Pages. In most parts of the country, the local telephone company is required to print and distribute them to its customers. YUKI NOGUCHI: For 130 years there have been White Pages, those thick, inky residential directories, but unlike the Yellow Pages, they don't generate advertising revenue. ![]() These environmental concerns and Internet services are conspiring against the White Pages phonebook, though phone companies are still required to offer it. A survey out today from the phone directory company,, shows that 81 percent of people are willing to do without a local phonebook when told how many trees are used to produce it.
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