[Jeffhs]

That set looks like it was made at the beginning of the electronic tuning era. I had a 1982 Zenith 13" portable color set that also had the words "electronic tuning" above the channel selector window and an 18-position selector knob (12 VHF and 6 UHF channels, the UHFs being set individually for a particular area), although this JC Penney set looks like it has an electronic arrangement that silently scans through all channels the tuner is set to receive, stopping at every usable signal it finds. I seriously doubt this is a motor-driven tuner, as by the '80s most major TV makers had switched to computerized electronic tuning in their higher-end sets, the type now used universally in all TVs.