Denver’s time and temperature hotline still gets a ton of calls
Apr 2, 2025, 4:53 PM | Updated: Apr 3, 2025, 12:12 pm
This might blow your mind if you’re under 30 or so – calling a hotline to find out the time and temperature used to be a thing people did, but this part was news to me: It’s actually still something a lot of people do. Various hotlines around the U.S., including Denver, continue to get over a million calls per month combined.
Most of us check the time and temperature by just looking at our phone now, so it’s more of a novelty thing. It used to be info we actually needed and couldn’t easily get.
Hotlines have been popping back up in lots of cities, because die-hard fans are relaunching them and paying to keep them active.
One guy named John Lochridge brought a hotline in Dallas after it shut down in 2011. Now he owns hundreds of time-and-temp lines in other cities too, including New York, Chicago and Denver!
If you’re a Denver-area old timer, you might remember dialing 303-844-4444 to hear the phone company’s time-and-temp line (though you probably didn’t dial the area code back then).
Now, you’ll probably also hear an ad before you get the good stuff, because the Denver line gets around a thousand calls a month, so it could be a good investment for certain advertisers.
