Well, anyone who thinks it has rung for audiotex should listen again. Those may be peals of celebration, not a dirge. Advertiser sponsors paid to reach these targeted audiences. Then came the Internet and the World Wide Web. The paradigm, as they say, shifted, to the point that just nine years after the Interactive Newspapers Conference was founded as an exclusively audiotex conference, the Feb. 4-7 meeting in Seattle had not one session devoted to audiotex.
Every year there is growth.
The call counts are up. The community continues to embrace it and gets information that we don't print. I have one spot left, and it'll be sold by Monday. More than half of dailies still lack audiotex capabilities, and new-media executives harbor a nagging suspicion that the Internet is going to swallow up this information option. Audiotex is strong now, but I don't know about the future.