Today in Media History: It wasn’t mobile, but in the ’80s and ’90s audiotex brought news to your phone

You could hear a newspaper on your phone in the ’80s and ’90s.

It was easy. Just dial a local audiotex number and you were connected to news and other features.

On January 30, 1984, The Miami News published a New York Times news service article called, “Move Over, Videotex; Here Comes Audiotex.”

“Videotex, in which people retrieve information using computers or specially equipped television sets, has not really caught on, partly because most people do not have computers. But virtually everyone has a telephone. So now many companies are trying to offer information services using electronic voices.”

The technology was new in 1984, but during the following decade audiotex became a key new media and information service, at least until something called the Web came along.

Audiotex faded away long before smartphones, however, there were portable phones in the 1980s and 1990s.

Perhaps someone listened to audiotex on one of those phones.

If so, I guess this commercial shows an example of 1990 mobile news technology:

The Los Angeles Times described audiotex, and imagined the future of newspapers, in 1991: