# News updates on my pager **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 3, 2001, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268 "2001-05-03T23:07:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Inky\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7feea3/32.png) [@Inky\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inky_1)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268/1 "2001-05-03T23:07:55Z")
Stupid question, but it’s been bugging me all day. My work just issued me a fancy new pager for me to lose, and I discovered it gives me AP news updates (China not giving airplane back, George Harrison has a growth on this lung, blah, blah…). Does this thing update \*itself[/] once in awhile, or am I expected to do somthing? It’s a Motorola --one of those fancy new ones where folk’s can e-mail me messages via the Weblink site. Yeah, yeah. I looked at the booklet and the webpage. Both are in greek. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 3, 2001, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268/2 "2001-05-03T23:47:22Z")
Unless it’s got more brains than I’m giving it credit for, it’s just receiving a packet of information that’s being broadcast to it periodically the same way your other pages are broadcast to it. Or is there something in your question I’m missing? ---
**Author:** ![Wartime\_Consigliori](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/9d8465/32.png) [@Wartime\_Consigliori](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wartime_Consigliori)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2001, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268/3 "2001-05-04T00:03:40Z")
I think I have the same model of pager. It’s cool, because you get sports news, too. You don’t have to do a thing but read the news, and only if you want to. BTW–does yours actually vibrate and/or beep when it receives the news bulletins? If so, there is a way you can set it so it will activate (buzz/beep) when you get a real page, but not when you get a news bulletin. (I only ask because we had a problem with that in my organization. I, being the only one who read the **F** _ING MANUEL_\*, spent two days teaching people how to work the damned thing.) I agree with you that the instructions are strange. Ya just gots to experiment. ---
**Author:** ![gazpacho](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6f9a4e/32.png) [@gazpacho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gazpacho)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2001, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268/4 "2001-05-04T00:08:16Z")
I have a Moto pager and I get the news updates from Verizon (the paging service). They are brodcast overy so often by the pager service and your pager can be set to display them or not. I have just a simple one way pager but I am sure yours gets its news the same way mine does. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2001, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/news-updates-on-my-pager/64268/5 "2001-05-04T02:42:37Z")
Inky, the pager services my company (Arch Wireless) offers include both basic national news/sports broadcasts (for all of the one-way and two-way alphanumeric pagers) and customizable broadcasts (for the high-end 2-way units). Yours is probably the former-it’ll run forever without any interaction needed.