Hi, I’m a Chinese girl and I’ve got a question in understaning an English phrase, which I’m wondering if you guys can provide an answer for:
what does “dial-in for dollars” mean? Thanks a lot
“Dialing for dollars” was a game in the older days of TV. Stations would broadcast a movie and, during breaks, the annoucer would call someone at random. If they could answer a question, they won money. If they failed, more money would be added and they’d try again later with a bigger prize.
Yes, in the old days, you actually had to dial a rotary device in order to make a phone call! How about that! So to win one of these “dialing for dollars” contests, you had to be fast in dialing the call-in number. No such thing as speed dial or number recall in the old days.
No, read RealityChuck’s description again. I remember these well from when I was a kid in Baltimore and Stu Kerr was the Dialing for Dollars host (I think he was also a clown on another show). They would cut the phone book up into strips, pick a strip at random, and pick a number at random to tell them how many names down the strip to count. They would call the number, and give them three rings plus a count of 10 to answer the phone. I can’t remember if they had to answer a question, maybe it was some question that allowed them to prove they were watching the show.
There were variations, of course: this was done by local stations and could be done any way the station wished. The standard was that the station called out, though I suppose somewhere it could have gone the other way.
Sometimes they didn’t ask a question; you just had to answer. There may have been a variation where the caller had to say a specific greeting (e.g., “I’m watching Dialing for Dollars”) to get the prize.
The main constant was that there was a jackpot that increased whenever they had no winner. For instance, the prize may have started at $100 and increased in increments of $20. The prizes would seem pretty small today, but they were a nice bit of money in the 60s.
In the version that I remember from local Los Angeles TV went as follows:
People would send in postcards with their name and number on them. The host would randomly pick a post card from a spinning drum. They would dial the number and whoever answered would have to immediately tell the host how much money was in the jackpot to win the prize. The jackpot would start at a certain value and go up every time some one gave an incorret answer.
Huan ying!
In common USA use these days the phrase “Dialing for Dollars” usually means making sales calls. If you call enough numbers you finally sell something and make some dollars.
Ni hui shuo Zhongwen ma?
I’m an English major and thisis actually the first time I’ve been here. I wasn’t really expecting so much volunteer help from you,which I sincerely appreciate.
It helps a lot. I’ve decided to frequent here in the future communicate with you and to make friends:)
Of course I speak Chinese, it’s my mother tongue:) I‘m from South China and am now studying in Beijing for my MA in applied linguistics.
大家好,我叫张小兔：）
Welcome to my homepage:http://rabbit5190.crblog.cn/user5/10365/
The version of Dialing For Dollars that I’m familiar with (apparently it was on the air for decades, stopping in the late 80s) went like this:
During a period of time before 6pm the station played a couple of old movies. During the commercials the Dialing for Dollars guy would give out a long random string of numbers, which changed every commercial. Then they’d call someone at random at the end of the movie. If they could spit back the string of numbers given at __ time they won some sort of prize. Mostly gift certificates from what I can recall.
For years my great-grandmother had tiny notebooks filled with numbers.
Your page is not working well for me, I don’t know if the problem is fonts or plug-ins or what. If you will pardon the hijack (everyone else can ignore this post), here are pages for my daughters Scarlett and Jett. I also have another daughter, Scout, who does not have her own page yet. We just brought her home 6 months ago and I’ve been busy, what with 7 kids to wrangle. 
Janice Joplin, Mercedes Benz
What, no Janis J. fans here? “Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz”
Wow, seven kids! that’s a large family and I have to say you are admirable parents. I’m a typical Chinese only child born in the 80s under the birth control policy. My mother(she is teaches in the local college) still complains a lot about having to raise me and to do her job at the same time.
I went to your daughters homepages.They are really cute little girls just as I was 20 years ago:)
At the same time I find it interesting that you choose two(or more) Chinese babies. Anyone in your family is Chinese?
I came acorss it when translating the HBO miniseries " from the earth to the moon" into Chinese. It is in episode one , when Deke Slayton called Jim lovell, Pete Conrald thought it was a “call-in for dollars”, which turned out to be an invitation for Jim to flight on the Gemini mission.
I do hope you’re going to stay around, since my main beef with this board is that there aren’t people from enough different countries here.
I too have troubles with connecting to you homepage, by the way…
We’ve totally left the context of the thread (OK in some other forums, but not in GQ). Feel free to email me (click on my user name, then select “email”).