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Originally Posted by bgadow
I have at least one Radiola radio set from the late 40s, made by RCA, just a plain brown bakelite AA5. I don't know why they offered the seperate Radiola line. (no mention of RCA on the front, only on the bottom label.) (I think it says RCA Radio Sales Co. on the bottom, so I guess a different division of the company sold these?)
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I would guess that those RCA "Radiola"-marked sets from the 40's would
have been mostly just to keep the trademark alive. "Radiola" was a name that RCA used on (I think) all of their radios in their early days, but they phased it out that moniker in the early 30's or so.
While RCA seemed to eventually stop using the Radiola name, they did seem to recycle the Victrola trademark (which they got from their purchase of Victor) for various purposes from time to time. Seems like all the RCA pre-packaged phonographs from the 1950's-era got badged with the Victrola name somewhere. ...Though that at least makes sense, since "Victrola" was originally supposed to indicate an internal horn phonograph, those would have been the 50's-modern equivalent (though Victor had originally further distinguished electrified phonos with the "Electrola" name). Then at some point, RCA Records took the Victrola name and made it into a sort of "budget" record label for classical music (sort of a low-cost alternative to RCA's premium "Red Seal" classical label).
I wonder what happened to the Victrola name after that, though. If RCA was still around and was still manufacturing audio equipment, would we be able to go to the store today and pick up an RCA "Digital Victrola" CD player..? What if RCA had called their Selectavision CED videodisc players "Video Victrolas" instead..?