[Dennman6]

In Feb. 1979 my dad went shopping for a new TV to replace the RCA Victor 23" B&W set he had bought new in 1965. I was 16 at the time. He took my mom & I along. She was to pick out the cabinet style AFTER I picked out the brand. My dad realized I knew more about color TV than he did, since I'd had a year of basic electronics at the BOCES vocational center when I was in high school. Also, my uncle had done electronics in the 1950s & 1960s, & mentored me in this area.

After dad concluded from newspaper ads that Kmart was the place to buy from(cheapest prices), we headed over to the Kmart in Liverpool, NY(we lived near Syracuse at the time). Kmart had a great display area for TVs, as it was a separate room in the electronics dept. with low-level lighting-great for really seeing what a CRT could do. I chose the RCA ColorTrak CTC-92 console. Mom picked out the dark Mediterranen console over the Early American oak cabinet(same RCA chassis). Also there were Zenith Chromacolor II, Admiral, & KTV-the Kmart house brand. Admiral must've been on its last legs by then, but the CRT did look good-but not as nice as the RCA or Zenith sets. The KTV sets didn't look that good at all by comparison, & they were positioned farthest from the RCAs. Then came the Zeniths, then the Admirals, FINALLY the KTV(clever, right?).

So who made the KTV line of sets, & were any of them any good? They had lots of 12 or 13" to 19" KTV sets, & only that one console by them. And the RCA CTC-92 still functions, with only a fusible resistor replaced in fall of 1980, after almost 2 years of daily use in a house they never had surge protectors. Everything was plugged straight into the wall outlets in those days.

Dennis Forkel