Lewiston Journal, September 15, 1911, page 8:
NEWS BY TELEPHONE.
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Jersey Corporation Plans To Establish Daily Service for Subscribers.
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Unless present plans miscarry, the New Jersey Telephone-Herald Co. proposes beginning Oct. 1 to furnish Newark and later adjacent cities with a telephone news service, modeled after the Telefon-Hirmondo, of Budapest, Hungary.
For some time past the company has been negotiating with the New York Telephone Co. for leased wires, but without success, as officials of the latter company feared that by leasing its wires to such a corporation it might invalidate its franchise rights. The matter has been thrashed out before the Public Utilities Commission of New Jersey, and that body, by an order which becomes effective Sept. 7, directs the wires to the New Jersey Telephone Herald Co.
The new corporation proposes to furnish a daily service to its subscribers, which will open at eight o'clock in the morning and continue until one hour after midnight. Beginning with a bulletin review of important news between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, then will follow the advertising page of the talking newspaper, which will be read from nine until 9:30. From that time until ten o'clock small items and personals of local interest will be in order.
News which may develop during the day, foreign dispatches, stock quotations and an afternoon program of orchestral music, followed by the baseball scores, complete the day's schedule. The evening hours will be given over to musical offerings, operas and an after-concert of orchestral music running from 1 P. M. until 1 A. M. Important news dispatches, however, will have the right of way for momentary interruptions.
News bulletins, advertising, stock quotations and such matters will be handled by the company's employes from the Essex Building, in Newark, while the music and Sunday sermons of noted preachers and public affairs of that nature will be conveyed to the subscribers thru microphones placed in the halls, theatres or rooms where the performance is going on.
Subscribers will not hear any sound from the instrument unless they put the receivers to the ear, except in the case of bulletins of news of world-wide interests, when a buzzer will call their attention to the fact that much news is about to be told. The instrument is so designed that no one can talk into it and be heard, except from the central office or from the places where the microphones are placed. So far as the subscribers are concerned, it is a "listening service" only.
Capt. William E. Gunn, of Newark, is the president of the New Jersey corporation.