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Zenith wasn't the only one offering them that late. Sylvania had them, as well as GE and Admiral (also sold under the Western Auto Truetone badge). In fact, I have two Sylvania B&W consoles - one from '78 and one from '80 (both came from the same dealer). He said that even in the '80's, there were old people who wanted no part of color and were willing to pay the price for a B&W console. He said that some of them wanted B&W due to poor eyesight and some wanted B&W because they were afraid of X-rays from a color set. Others had always had a B&W console and simply didn't want to change. These B&W consoles were not cheap. IIRC, one of the ones I got had a $399 price sticker on it and for that price, one could have bought a no-frills 19" color set with a rollabout cart or they could have spent around $150 for a 19" B&W and a cart. I think B&W console production stopped by '81 and I read that was because the large CRT's were no longer being made.
Up until the mid '90's, I could still get decent money ($35-$50) for 19" B&W sets because there were still older people who did not want color and poor people who needed a TV; but, couldn't afford the $75-$100+ for a used color set.
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