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Christmas1970
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ow would you like to be selling
TVs at 05OOO apiece?That's
today's equivalent price of a 26"
colour screen bought in December 197O.
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At that time few people could afford to buy
a colour TV set outright, and about 80%
of those that went out the shop door were
rented.Providedyou could raise the capital
to finance the operation,TV rental was a
very fine thing indeed in I 970,though the
service commitmentwas huge,as we shall
see.Peoplewere frightened of breakdown
and the cost of repair,scared bY the
prospect of the picture-tubefailing.They
seldom did; in fact the failures were usually
elsewherein the set.
The retailing atmospherewas quite
different in those days,with no internet or
mail-order purchasing.Most customers
knew the shop staff and many knew the
boss (very accessiblethen), as is still true
of many independent dealerstoday We
would decoratethe shop at Christmas
with a big tree in the showroom or on the
pavementoutside.Profit margins were
much greaterthan they are now even
though there was one cloud in the sky:
the proliferation of discount warehouses
spawnedby the abolition of ResalePrice
Maintenance- a law incredible in this day
and age,which demandeduniform prices
for the sale of consumer durable goods.
Independentdealers had always got a
lower discount than the multiple stores,and
then becameundersold as well. As today,
their strength was in the service they could
offer before,during and after the sale.
In 1970,a 26"colour TV cost about f,300,
averagewages were f,50 a week, and a
mini-car was priced at f600. It's interesting
to see that an averagehouse then cost
somethree years' gross wages- now it's
six-and-a-half years'.
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The TV sets of Christmas 1970were huge
and heavy monsterswith deep glass plcture
tubes and heavy breathing,energy-hungry
electroniccircuitry Most of them contained
glass valves whose llves were limited, and
all of them were subject to failure because
of dry solderedjoints and breakdown of
passivecomponents,much of it due to high
operatingtemperatures,unreliableparts and
poor design.Typically,a colour set broke
down every five months and a call from a
service technicianwas required.Some 1970
colour TVs had 900 components.
ManufacturerKolster-Brandesproduced
hand-wired colour TVs with all their
parts solderedto tags.and they became
notorious for bad joints. Therewere three
solid-state(no valves) chassis,Thorn 2000
and 3000,and the Rank-Bush-MurphyA823.
We favouredthe Thorn models because
they could be serviced bY swaPPing
modules which we then repaired in the
comfort of the workshop-The 3000 type
employeda world first: an energy-efficient
switch-modepower supply,now universally
used. The earliest colour sets,dating from
1967,had to work on 405line black and
white transmissionstoo. with complex
internal mechanicalswitches for the
changeover.Colour had started on BBC2in
December1967and becameavailableon
BBCl and ITV (there were only these three
channels)in November1969.
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We operatedin a rural district in the south-
east of England,about ten miles from the
nearestlargetown: our operationcovered
town and country.We had a fleet of Ford
Escofi and Moffis Minor vans,four or five of
which, mannedby skilled technicians'set off
beforenine each morning,job-cards in hand,
to all points of the compass.Each man was
lssued with coins for use in red telephone
HMVCOLOURMA5TER LIODEt2700,
COURTE5YOFSCLJTIIWESTENGLAND
TV I\'IUSiUM
VINTACE
boxesto pick up service calls as they came
into the workshop.Later we went over to
radio-telephones, which we still havetoday
With the frequency of breakdown in
those days it would not have been practical
to bring many sets into the workshop for
repair,so most service work was done on
site:easy if it involved swappingvalves
or modules,or cleaningtuner, switch
or valve holder contacts;more difficult
where component-leveldiagnosis and
replacementwas required.Every field
technician carried a full complement
of service manualsand a huge box of
components;some generlc,many specific
to a particular chassis.We got to know the
foibles and failings of each very well. At
Christmastime the field technicians carried
replacementfairy bulbs alongsidethe
resistors,transistors,flyback transformers
and mains droppers.Many repairs on site
involved the use of a soldering iron, and a
cardinal sin was to burn customers'carpets
with it - easily done!
Every van carried a couple of loan sets:
small rotary-tuned Sony Trinitron jobs with
excellentcolour pictures.The investmentin
thesealone,ten at !190 (retail).equatesto
a five-figure sum today In fact, those little
sets were the forerunners of the invasion
of the industry by lapaneseTV equipment,
which was soon to start. Its performance
and reliability was to be streetsahead of
the equivalentBritish products.No TVs had
processor control or software drive of any
sort in those days of course!
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That was my introduction to the world
of TV How different are things now for
proprietors,for shop floor staff,for such
technicians as remain....F