[Robert Grant]

I forget exactly where I heard it (some convention, either ETF or a DXer group) that 1972 was both the year color TV reached 50% of american households, and the first year that sales of color TV sets surpassed sales of monochrome sets in the USA.

Quite an achievement, as, in equivalent picture size, color TV cost about 3 times as much as black-and-white at the time, with a typical 25" consolette color TV being about the same as two or three months' house payment (and remember, we are talking about one speaker, and no remote control).

Most of my friends had in 1972 exactly what we had. A 23" color consolette in the living room, and a 22" VHF-only B&W consolette in the master bedroom (the same set that had been the only set in the house before the color set came),

A third set, 9" or 12" all-channel B&W portable, new, and more often in a daughter's bedroom or the kitchen than the son's room, was not uncommon, and not much later this set would be color.

In lower-middle to middle class families, the main set could still quite possibly be a black-and-white, especially if the head-of-household was older.

The larger B&W sets were the first to be pulled out of production. Though some VKers have tracked a few 22" sets from around 1980, by about 1973 this type of set was essentially finished. 19" B&W sets would continue to be available for a few more years, but the monochrome market was really driven by the 12", now cheap, and whose sales would be healthy into the late 1980's. The downfall of the inexpensive 12-inch set was the widespread adoption of mid-band and super-band channel cable, which made traditional mechanical tuners obsolete, and this narrowed the price gap between color and B&W sets.

I believe the last 12" B&W sets were the "prison TVs" like the KTV 1210-CLR, a real weirdo with electronic pushbutton controls, on-screen indicators, and a clear plastic cabinet (so owners could not hide drugs or makeshift weapons in the TV).

Very cheap 5" B&W battery-powered sets, with a simple mechanical tuner that worked like a radio (and often included radio reception), costing as little as $15 toward the end, were still being sold right up to the digital transition in 2009, even though buyers should have known these sets were to become obsolete very soon (sure, they could be hooked up to cable, a VCR, or a DTC, but that detracted from the most important feature of such a set - portability). My kludge of a Zinwell box with batteries to such a set has been fun, but most people would consider it a PITA. Strangers have been VERY amused seeing me operate the kludge.