The Prefix You Have Reached--555--<i> Is</i> in Service

Suppose you hold in your hand a telephone book filled with the numbers of your favorite characters on TV and the big screen.

There are Mike, Carol and the Brady children at 555-6161; in Minneapolis, Mary Richards’ home number is 555-7862; Charles Townsend Associates, which employs “Charlie’s Angels,” can be reached at 555-0267, and the Jarretts’ home number from the movie “Ordinary People” is 555-2368.

For 30 years, the 555 prefix provided a way for producers to avoid accidentally giving a real phone number and driving some innocent phone user around the bend with prank calls and the pathetic bleatings of fans.

No more. Thanks to Bellcore, the New Jersey-based research division of the regional Baby Bells, the 555 prefix is being given out to businesses nationwide. Since it began taking bids for the prefix last May, Bellcore manager Jim Deak says nearly 1,400 numbers with the 555 prefix have been assigned to almost 500 companies. (It will continue to serve as the prefix for long-distance information.)

The prefix appeals to businesses because it works in every area code and, well, it’s catchy.

“It has a sort of cachet,” Deak says. “It appeals to a lot of people.”

The history of the fictional 555 prefix dates from the arrival of television.

Reciting a phone number in the movies “didn’t used to be a problem . . . because the [movie] theater was a controlled atmosphere,” says Joan Pearce, who runs a legal and background research firm for the entertainment business. But with the explosion of TV, “every Archie Bunker with a beer by his side and a telephone by his elbow” could call a number he heard on the tube, Pearce says. “It became a serious problem.”

So under the auspices of Ma Bell, the 555 prefix was created to be used as the three-digit exchange for any made-up character from Beverly Hills to Bangor.

In the new numbering system, Bellcore has set aside 100 numbers ranging from 555-0100 through 555-0199 as fictitious and Deak guarantees these numbers “will never have an active service.”

He says that Bellcore was “very concerned” about the potential conflict with the entertainment industry’s use of the number and that he attempted to contact key entertainment organizations. “They didn’t seem to be interested in the matter at all,” Deak says.

One potential problem is that TV shows and movies will be viewed over and over again in reruns and on home video. A television program produced two years ago might contain a 555 number that does not fall into Bellcore’s 100-number safety zone.

The afternoon children’s program “Tiny Toons” recently displayed an 800-555 number that was supposed to be a mock deejay request line. Several Tiny Toon viewers dialed the number and were connected to a phone-sex directory.

The potential for financial disaster on both sides of the line is great. The 555 number might be a toll call. If it is a toll-free number, the sponsoring business could be inundated with unwanted calls--and unwanted bills.

Although Bellcore has already assigned the 555 numbers, Deak says very few are in use.

“All I give out is the number,” he says. “The issue of how these numbers will be used is unresolved.” Deak cites routing and billing procedures as the top two issues to be dealt with.

Veteran television writer David Black avoids using the 555 prefix in his scripts. To hear the familiar number during a production “breaks the frame of the story,” he says. He has learned “ways to finesse it” without ever uttering a character’s phone number.

But he does understand the reasoning behind the numerical segregation. “Some poor soul might get 150 calls because [the callers] think they might get Mel Gibson.”