RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: NR business news starts with good-bye movie phone.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: 777-FILM was a popular phone number in the mid-90s. It's how savvy moviegoers found out when and where their choice of movie was playing. Dial the number and hello, welcome to movie phone. The phone service was bought by AOL in 1999 for a whopping $388 million. Since then, callers have dropped from about three million down to just thousands, according to The New York Times. Now AOL is warning callers that the line will soon go silent, though the movie phone app will still be available.
To find out movie listings, all you needed to do was call 777-FILM. Because calls have dropped off, the automated phone service will be discontinued. The app will still show movie listings.