That's somewhat clever, but did he ever join the crowd and suggest they come in during business hours for a good deal?

I worked in an independent RCA dealer TV shop in the late 50s. They had about ten color sets on the floor, but usually only had a couple on at a time.

Department stores, on the other hand, had rows of color sets, all on. Of course they all had different color pictures, mainly because the stores didn't have competent people to set them up.

Watched this on this mornings Today Show.

https://visions4netjournal.files.wor...2/img_3903.jpg

All about vintage analogue this week.

Oh Prunella :sigh: A few wrong knobs, missing control box door and a BW picture superimposed on a 1963 RCA color set

TVs were never designed to scrape by just a few hours a day between regular failures being corrected. Perhaps sets in the very early days 30s-40s may have been more prone to problems as it was all developmental at that time. By the 50s television was fairly well developed and color (mid 50s) was an expensive reality.

I would venture to say that durability, and performance was WAY more stringently monitored, tested and engineered. Someone mentioned that you must consider the (now) old sets being completely new. None of the years of use and degradation that we see trying to bring them back to life. I wouldn't hesitate to watch a say mid 50s black and white set all day long if the caps were renewed. So I'm sure that back in time the sets at least could play during store hours with little problems like bad tubes. The vacuum tube was the weakest link then and frankly they are more durable then they get credit for these days. They last a pretty darned long time before becoming damaged enough to effect performance.

Enter the age of the transistor and "Solid State" circuitry and you begin to see why it became perceived that old tube sets were prone to regular failure. One tube a year could be considered regular failure. And once solid state had enough years of engineering under it's belt, many sets were made that all but never failed. People at that point would upgrade when a CRT finally gave out.

^^^ Tubejunke has it exactly right. My first color set was a Motorola hybrid, and while it never failed outright, the horizontal section would get tired after a year, and the picture would brighten right up again with the replacement of two tubes.

The TODAY show picture... A 6GH8 shorted out. That's my excuse.

Most independent dealers didn't leave a bunch of sets turned on all day, because 80% of the time or more the display set was the same one that got sold. I used to have about 20 models on display, but didn't usually have more than a couple of extra's in the box.

Of course, in those days there was a distributor in town where we could go and pick up a new one from the warehouse any time.