Courier Online, 1994
In the summer of 1994 the Evansville Courier, a Scripps-Howard paper, put up its own dial-up BBS, Courier Online, and ran a four-week field test to find out what local computer users wanted from it and what they'd pay. [AUTER]
A researcher, Philip J. Auter, was allowed to study the test and publish the results, which is why we know so much about it. [AUTER]
The test
- Start
- Monday, July 11, 1994 [AUTER]
- End of data
- Sunday, August 7, 1994. The board stayed up after that. [AUTER]
- Users
- 1,150 different people, 4,117 hours online [AUTER]
- Cost to users
- Free, unlimited, "provided they could log in" [AUTER]
- Modems
- Started with seven 14,400-baud lines, bumped to 12 after two weeks [AUTER]
- Software
- Major BBS [EVV95]
- Number
- 812-424-1099 (board line, 1995 list) [EVV95]
What was on it
National and local news, games, email between users, a photo file, discussion groups and classified ads. There was no display advertising during the test. [AUTER][MED]
Busy signals
The seven starting lines were "nearly always busy," and new users dropped off because they couldn't get in. Once five more lines went in, use went up. [AUTER] The longest crash was eight hours. [AUTER] By March 1995 the Evansville list shows Courier Online with 12 lines, a 28.8K USR modem and 4 GB of files. [EVV95]
People came to talk
The paper built it around the news, but callers mostly wanted each other. 57% of time online was spent in Teleconference or Chat. Menus and reading files, including stories, took 22%. Games got 3% and email 2%. [AUTER]
92% of those surveyed owned their own computer. [AUTER][MED]
WNIN Online
The local public broadcaster had a board too. WNIN Online ran Major BBS 6.21F on 8 lines, with "Education and Information Services free to the community." [EVV95]
What came next
In December 1994 Evansville Online started selling dial-up internet. The Courier was its partner for the first year and soon its largest owner, and the paper went online on the web through it. [EOL]
![Evansville Online home page, March 30, 1997, via the Wayback Machine <a class="cite" href="/sources#WB">[WB]</a>](/img/history/wayback-evansville-online-1997.png)
Did you call Courier Online or WNIN Online? Remember your handle? We'd love to hear about it.