SOUTHAM TO REVAMP PHONE SERVICES
By Adnews Staff
Toronto-based Southam Inc. is launching a new commercial phone service in Ottawa that is free to the public, and starting to charge for one that has been free since it launched in 1989. Some time this year Southam will start running a system which consumers dial up for information on products or services and through which companies can make sales pitches. Consumers will find the numbers in listings in The Ottawa Citizen. Meanwhile, the company began charging 50 cents a call in Ottawa this week for an information service it has been offering free-of charge - as other newspaper publishers have been doing in recent years - since 1989. People can call for sports scores, stock quotes, soap opera updates and business market reports, as well as for health, gardening and tax planning information. If this works out in Ottawa, Southam will start charging for the service in other cities, where it is run as an operation connected to its newspapers. Southam started running it for free because it wanted its newspapers to be seen as primary sources of information. However the company now wants to make money instead of just spend it on the service. The Southam papers with information phone lines are the Hamilton Spectator, the Ottawa Citizen and the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, all in Ontario, as well as the Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal.