Color TV brand popularity - 1960's

[whirlcool]

My parent had a Olympic B&W television, radio & photograph. They bought it in 1958. I had never heard of the brand before and never saw another one again. I remember when they bought it. It came in several styles, including Chinese. Black lacquer with a chinese motif painting on the front doors. We opted for the mahogany set. I believe it was a 21 inch television. It lasted until they upgraded to color and a separate Zenith console stereo in 1964. I don't think the Olympic gave them any trouble at all. A reliable set. I always thought that Olympic may be more popular in the northeast than in the midwest.

This was one of the reasons I started this thread. To find out if there were any regional popularity differences in television brands.

 

[drewz]

While we had all brands at some point and being a RCA Victor fan and collector I must admit some of those works in drawer Motorola color sets had the best deep rich colors and great contrast.

 

But don't you think how RCA & Zenith both got to be staples was because of all their "Trade In Days At Your Dealer" promotions always keeping people trading up like cars with the latest and greatest?

 

[Ultramatic]

DuMont Color TV

We had a 25" DuMont color console. I think it arrived around 1966. It was out first color set. To be honest I have not seen ANY DuMonts of that era. Even advertising for ANY DuMont color sets are very rare. When the DuMont died due to the NYC blackout of 1977, my parents got a RCA color console. The bedrooms had 19" Magnavox color sets. Those were strippers, no remote control, rotary channel knobs.

 

[cfz2882]

color TV

first color TV my parents bought was a small(probaly 13")RCA around 1972-i remember
watching "watergate"stuff on it LOL They sold this TV about 1974 at a rummage sale.
About 1977,they bought a big 1968 RCA console at the salvation army-this worked
quite well as i recall untill about 1980 when i started to go on the blink every
month or so;different problem every time-usually a tube or a bad connection was the
problem.After about the 5th repair parents"threw in the towel"on this RCA and
bought a little 13"taiwanese"bohsei"color TV...I stripped this TV-finding a big
resistor under the chassis that was burnt out-and used the parts for electronic
projects(still have a couple parts,they show '68 date codes)This old RCA had a
round PX behind a rectangle opening and 6x9"speakers on either side.

 

[davey7]

My family didn't get TV until 1980 - my mom did have a TV in the 50's, probably a portable, for watching baseball while ironing - and we went right to the land of a 19" Trinitron from Sony (from Marshall Field's mother ship on State Street no less, rather than Polk Brothers or Sears where everything else came from). I'd still have that TV (which even lived in Detroit with my grandmother for a few years) but my best friend gifted me his Sharp when his mother in law left them her stereo tv (I only watch movies now, but that TV couldn't handle all our on air channels in Chicago even when new with it's limited station pre-sets).

I remember all kinds of stories about the "consultants" for early color - Technicolor especially. TV converted to color pretty quickly, though Italy didn't go until nearly 1980, so we miss all those variety shows from the 60's being truly psychedelic in BW.

 

[ptcruiser51]

OK, Allen

Back to your original query. You are right that most early color sets I remember were either RCA or Zenith, with Admiral close behind. We lived in an early 60's development so all the neighbors had pretty much homogenized tastes. Same kind of appliances and TV's because all the houses were identical split-levels. Only the cars in the driveway differed!

Because DuMont's were manufactured here in NJ, some people had them (you weren't alone, Louie!) My relatives in Pennsylvania had Olympics. The first people on our street in the 'burbs to have color were the Andersons who lived down the block, a 1961 RCA Console. They were a little upscale for our development, the first family to have two cars (his was an MG convertible). Also the first ones with an above-ground pool.

We kids got shuttled around a lot for babysitting. Maybe I was more attentive than most, I paid attention to things like appliances. Most were RCA/Zenith/Admiral/Philco. Diagonally across the street from us was a childless couple, he was an engineer for Bell Labs and built a color TV from "Heathkit" (anyone remember THEM?). This was about 1964.

The late 1950s saw appliances go "big" with warehouse TV and appliance stores. We had them lining our highways here in Jersey to serve the flight to the suburbs: Prince Range, Brick Church Appliance, Davega's, many others. Lots of families bought their appliances/TV's at department stores where they had charge accounts: Bamberger's/Macy*s, Abraham and Strauss, Stern's, Gimbels' because they were so expensive time payments were a plus. A good amount still went to neighborhood independents that featured one or two brands at most. People were still afraid of the color technology (like my OM) and nearby "service" was an important consideration.

The only major manufacturer of color TV's that I never saw anywhere was Westinghouse. This is odd because W'house had a big factory here in Newark, NJ. A TV Guide issue of the late 1960's listed manufacturers of TV's that gave up the ghost in the face of competition. Three that I remember were Westinghouse, Hoffman, and DuMont. They followed scads of others that abandoned the field when B&W was still "king": Hallicrafters, Stromberg-Carlson, Air King, Andrea, Capehart. How Emerson survived I'll never know!

My cousin in Scranton, PA was the only one I recall that had a Silvertone 12" portable. Lousy picture, worse reception. He bought it, again, because of his Sears charge. Older aw.o members will know that at one time Sears carried only its own house brand. Silvertone electronics, Coldspot refrigeration, and Kenmore everything else! I think it was in the 1980s that they finally went "global" with other major manufacturers.

Hope my "rememberies" entertained you all. My head is ready to explode!

 

[maytagbear]

Our first color set

was a 25 inch Sylvania console, in "Early American." We got it in 1967. We were not the first on our street with color, but we were among the first. It had a great picture, and decent sound, when it worked right. It needed an adjustment or something every 6 months or so, but we kept it through the early 80s. Ma bought it because a local service shop sold them.

Then, we had a Sharp built, but Montgomery Wards labeled 19 incher, with a primitive remote control. It was quite reliable, and would probably still be running, if a lightning strike hadn't gotten it.

My current tv, which I only use as a DVD monitor, is a 13 inch Sanyo.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[whirlcool]

Yes, I find this thread very interesting.

I have seen DuMont B&W sets, but never a color set. Maybe another east coast brand? Also there was Setchell-Carlson out of MSP that made B&W sets. They gave up the ghost well before color TV hit the market.

On my various travels for my job usually most hotels had RCA sets.

 

[polkanut]

The majority of our family all had Zenith sets because of Jerry's Music here in Wausau.  Jerry Goetsch, the owner, was my Grandma Baumann's 2nd cousin, and the store had a very liberal time payment plan.  My parents received 1967 19" b&w Zenith as a wedding gift from Grandpa & Grandma Baumann, then they bought their 25" Zenith color console in 1972.  It lasted until about 1983 when we got another Zenith console model.  About 1990 or so my dad won a SONY 25" from a local grocery store.  When my mom told him he'd won, he thought she was pulling his leg.  That set lasted  until about 2001 when they bought their current Durabrand set from Wal-Mart.

 

[petek]

Oh the agony of being the last on the street, in the neighborhood, in the world to get a color tv.. I lived that nightmare LOL

But to answer the question first.. the vast vast majority of people in my little world back then (60's) bought RCA color tv's. I only recollect one of our neighbors having a Zenith and nobody having a Silvertone, although we had a Silvertone b/w set.

My dad staunchley refused to get a color set and yes he used as someone above said, the excuse "they haven't perfected it yet" and the "if I wanted to get a color set I go on over to Sears right now and buy 10 of them for cash, not on a credit card if I wanted" Which he could have btw. I don't really know why he was so against it. Maybe because neither of my folks watched much tv and he thought most of it was garbage but then again as my mom said they were the first people in the whole subdivision to get a tv back in the late 40's and she had the first automatic washer (a Kenmore) before anyone else as well. For him if it wasn't practical it wasn't worth it I suppose. Anyways, they didn't get a color set until sometime in the early 70's, a crappy RCA which never had a good picture.

 

[cfz2882]

westy color TVs

I only saw a '60s westy color TV once and it was just the tube,chassis and controls
-found in a dumpster around 1976.Amoung the parts i kept were the knobs as they
were pretty-they had prismatic inserts that would reflect rainbow colors much like
that prismatic tape you could buy in car accesory stores in the '70s and '80s...
I do have a westy B/W tv;'65 "jet-set"(not in working order,a project for someday)

 

[lordkenmore]

"Oh the agony of being the last on the street, in the neighborhood, in the world to get a color tv."

Well my family probably was the last to have color. Early 70s for the first color set? Ha! Try not even by 1990! My family's first TV was a small GE black and white that my parents bought in the early years of their marriage. It gave up the ghost in the early 80s someplace, and it got replaced by another small black and white TV. I never heard the reasons for only getting another black and white TV. We weren't heavy TV watchers, so getting a high end TV would not have been a priority. But the timing may have been an influence--the new TV was bought right after Christmas. At that time, it may have been desirable for the family finances to keep the price as low as possible. I remember going to Fred Meyer with my mother to get the new TV. They were on sale, and she grumbled all the way home about that fact. Not that we'd saved a few dollars, but her view that it was to hook teenagers who had some Christmas gift cash, and get them to buy a TV for their room. She did not approve of that idea in the least. She had a low opinion of TV...and that opinion did nothing but sink as the years went by.

There was some talk about getting color about the time we got a VCR. But that was a "someday" type of thing. Someday became "never." Meanwhile, we were probably the only family in America who did NOT have color, but DID have a VCR.

Surprisingly, perhaps, I was never bothered by black and white. It was what I was used to. Plus at times it didn't really matter. For a while in the 80s, most of the TV shows we watched were old 60s reruns aired by a Seattle station specializing in classic TV. Many if not all of these were black and white, anyway.

My own first color TV--and still the current one--is a Magnavox. Probably about 20". It was something abandoned when someone I know moved on to bigger and better things. It isn't the best set, but it works OK for now. I don't actually watch TV, just library DVDs, and thrift store VHS tapes.

 

[whirlcool]

Oh, and besides Kenmore, Silvertone Sears also had the "Homart" brand. I think I saw that brand once on a Sears central air unit and maybe some outdoor lawn equipment sometime. I think it faded away in the mid 60's when they started to brand these items as just Sears.

I remember the MGA brand before it became Mitsubishi. A smaller television only store in the mall sold those. Usually they were large screen projection televisions.
I only knew one person with one. A guy I used to fly with. We were talking about televisions one day and he said he bought an MGA because he felt it was a good deal for what you got.

A guy that lived down the street from my uncle had a Heathkit Color TV. He built it as part of a electronics night school he was taking. He had it installed in the wall in his den. My uncle said it had a fantastic picture on it, but I never got to see it. I kept asking if we could go down there to see it but my aunt said you can't go visit people just to see their television set. Why the people would think I am strange or something. Later Zenith was bought by Goldstar, not Samsung as I mentioned earlier. Zenith also bought out Heathkit and closed them down.

Zenith also was the company that developed MTS stereo broadcasting for television as well as the HDTV standard for broadcasting in the U.S. before LG acquired them.

My sister told me my parents bought a VCR shortly before they both passed. She said that they unboxed it and put it on top of the television but could never
figure out how to connect it or use it. I was married at the time living across the country from them and didn't get home very often. Had I known, I probably would have made the trip to hook it up for them.

I started seeing Sony sets in the late 70's and early 80's. They did get a great picture. I do remember someone having a 19" Sony color set and the screen was somewhat of a cylindrical shape. I thought that was odd.

Does anyone remember those far out looking ultra modern Zenith and RCA sets that came out in the early 80's? Both were full sized consoles that looked like something out of the future? The Zenith sat on a pedestal and was silver and somewhat crescent shaped.

Here is a photo of an RCA 2000 set from 1969. Notice how those black bars stick out quite a way between the screen and the speakers? I wonder why they did that?

 

[whirlcool]

Does anyone know anyone who has ever had a Curtes-Mathis television? I remember them advertising in the early 80's with the tag line "The most expensive television made, and darned well worth it". They were pretty well made with supposedly a bunch of them still in use today. They were made in Texas.

The link leads to a Curtes Mathis website. They show some of their models and one even turned on. Looks like a pretty nice picture.

http://curtismathes.webs.com/

 

[whirlcool]

And here is a photo of that Zenith futuristic television I was talking about. A friend of our family had one. They said that they recently got cable and asked if I could hook the box up for them. The picture was quite dim. The reason was that the entire television was encased in brown smoke residue from the people that lived there smoking! One time when we were there I took a bottle of windex and cleaned the set up. The people who lived there couldn't figure out why I wanted to do that and my parents were horrified. But the set looked like new again! I must have gone through and entire roll of paper towels!

 

[lordkenmore]

I remember the Homart name. The house I grew up in was partly updated in the 60s, and the people who lived there then were evidently Sears addicts. It appeared everything they bought was Sears. I can't remember what products had that name--it's been so long--but I do remember seeing it.

I think Silvertone was used for musical instruments in addition to TV and radio.

 

[drewz]

Allen,

 

Here is a photo of an RCA 2000 set from 1969. Notice how those black bars stick out quite a way between the screen and the speakers? I wonder why they did that?

 

Those two black bars were closing panels which when closed made the entire front of the set black, ultra modern, model 2000, only 2000 made a collectors item now I guess?  This set was part of a big promotion for RCA, if I am correct they also cost $$$

 

[passatdoc]

@whirlcool/allen

When my parents replaced the Hitachi with the Mitsubishi, I was in charge of the purchase. My parents had to go out of town, so they left me with the credit card and said to buy whatever I felt was best (hey, I was a second year medical student by then, I guess that qualified me to select a tv----NOT!). The store from which I ultimately purchased was a dealer for both Mitsubishi (then, a rare brand) and also Curtes Mathis. The latter were significantly more expensive than Mitsubishi, which itself was priced higher than Sony or Panasonic or Zenith or RCA. My parents' budget was more or less "under $500" which I followed by selecting the 19" Mitsubishi. The 21" model was like two hundred dollars more. Supposedly at the time, Mitsubishi was the most expensive mass-produced tv in the USA at the time, with Curtes Mathis being a high end, limited-production model.

 

[112561]

Zenith had the Avanti, which was an all white cabinet on its own sculpted base, and the fancy curved tv they had showed up in the community church thrift store in Jensen Beach months ago! I couldn't get it for some stupid reason.

We moved in here with a '52 Philco, on a hideous swivel table. Then Daddy got a Philco console with twin speakers and Cool Chassis, no UHF on it until he bought a top of set converter. Then we could see CBS! Next one was a GE console in an attractive Danish style cabinet. I walked into the house one day in '78, and the tv had a color picture! It was a new Zenith in a metal cabinet, on a plastic Danish modern base. Next was the '84 Space Command, which would only come on a few years later when it felt like it. Daddy was gone by '87, the tv lasted until '96 when Mom got tired of waiting for the Zenith to come on. She got a new RCA stereo Colortrak XS console with quite a few features for a modestly priced set. Convergeance went out on it, and it sits awaiting its fate. A 1971 Total Automatic Color Magnavox armoire sits in its place, I bought it for the Astro-Sonic, and I watch tv on a nine inch Zenith in a Vanilla cabinet. Have many little color and b&w sets now.

Briefly, I actually owned the first color set in this house, a metal table RCA, from the owner of the gay bar in Fort Pierce, about two years before the living room Zenith. After I sold that, I got a swell Zenith 19 inch Space Command with the mechanical tuning. It had a hideous pic in the store, and I tuned it in before I took it. The guy would have charged more than $50 for it if HE had figured out how to get the picture fixed. Then, the '87 13 inch Zenith remote, and much later, an '87 19 inch table Zenith stereo. Then, the ultra modern '79 System 3 table set. On and on......

(not the Avanti, curved Zenith on base)

 

[norgeway]

Du Mont Color

I had a beautiful DuMont color set that I let a friend talk me out of, Ive kicked myself ever since, It was a 21 inch round tube with 4 speaker Hi Fi sound, It uses a RCA tube and chassis, as did a lot of the older color sets.