On this day in 1984, California Comments was started. California Comments, or "Calcom" for short was a telephone "commentline" based in the San Fernando Valley, CA. Commentlines were phone lines with automatic answering devices that would play a weekly produced recording from 6 to over 30 minutes in length. The recording would consist of messages that were left by callers on an answering machine (called an "input line"). Callers would talk about whatever was on their mind. It was sort of a "talk radio of the telephone". While Calcom was using the name "REC Telephone Network" in 1984 (REC were the initials for REC's founder Michi Eyre's on-air personna at the time), the line name was changed to REC407 407 was the telephone exchange prefix where all of the phone lines were at and was a very unusual code at the time for where the line was located. REC would eventually expand to interactive phone systems where callers would use a touch tone phone to leave messages and talk to other callers in both public and private message environments. REC phone lines in the San Fernando Valley would run between 1984 and 1991 with a brief return in 1994. In 1996, REC602 was first a comment line and then an interactive system that operated in Phoenix, AZ.
REC's current involvement in Low Power FM advocacy and services started in the late 90s prior to the filing of RM-9208 and RM-9242.
For a complete year by year history of REC, visit http://home.recnet.com/history
