Location, Location, Location

[Jeffhs]

Most everyone in my neighborhood, including us, had TV in the '50s, mostly black and white. The first television station in Cleveland went on the air in 1947 on channel 5, followed the next year by channel 3, then in 1949 channel 8, though when they first went on the air they were on channels 4, 5 and 9 respectively, where they remained until Detroit got its network stations. (Cleveland didn't get its first UHF station, an NET [now PBS] affiliate, until 1965.)

By the 1970s I was seeing quite a few older (1950s) TV sets in the trash, those TVs having been replaced either by small tube-powered portables or color sets when the old ones developed serious repair problems, though a lot of people kept their old b&w sets in their basements as second sets if they still worked halfway decently. The first color TV I ever saw in the neighborhood I grew up in was a '60s-vintage Motorola console (don't recall if it was a roundie or a rectangular tube set, though since it was from the sixties I'd guess the latter), with an indicator on the front panel to indicate when the set was receiving a color broadcast. My neighbors had sets by Muntz, Sears-Silvertone, Philco, et al.; our own first set was a 1954 RCA Victor 21" console, replaced in the '60s by a '50s Crosley "Super V" 21" console; the Crosley was replaced in the mid-'60s by a 17-inch all-channel Silvertone portable. The last was built like a tank and lasted some six years, continuing to work well even after having been hurled down a flight of stairs in a fit of anger by my dad's second wife (to this day I am amazed the CRT didn't implode when the set hit the wall at the foot of the stairs). I used that set for six months following the incident before something, don't recall what it was after all these years (thirty-plus now), burned out or shorted and rendered the set unusable.

The TVs that were really mine in the '60s-'70s were, with three exceptions, all cast-off sets I found in the neighbors' trash. I had TVs of almost every major make except Magnavox; most of them were in my basement, but I always had one in my bedroom. The first TV of my own I ever had was a 16" Capehart console my great-aunt had; that set lasted a few years, with a good picture even on rabbit ears in our area, then was replaced, IIRC, by a 1955 metal-case Emerson 17" portable. The second set I inherited from relatives was a 1960s-vintage GE portable with a system that automatically adjusted the picture brightness according to room light level, by means of a photocell at the base of the control cluster (the first television I ever saw in my life with such a picture-control system--I think this even predated Magnavox's Videomatic); that set lasted a year or two or so, before something shorted and blew the fuse. Never did find out what the problem was. The third inherited TV was my grandmother's 16-inch 1951 General Electric console, which she gave me after getting a color set when she retired in the early seventies. The GE set worked a year or so and was still working when I had to give it up in 1972, when we moved.

The rest of the TVs I had after that, after a 1961 Philco that replaced my 1964 Silvertone when a circuit board cracked in the latter and a 1969 Sharp 12" b&w portable, were new. I bought my first new color set in 1979, a Zenith L1310C 13" all-channel portable with a delta-gun CRT and a very good picture (using the attic antennas in our house at the time--rabbit ears didn't work well for color where I grew up, and they won't work very well at all where I live now). This set was followed in 1982 by a 13" Zenith portable that had a delta-gun tube and, like its predecessor, an excellent picture, again on our attic antennas. I used that set for 17 years, never had five minutes worth of trouble with it; then, in 1999, I moved again, leaving those sets at my former home. I bought an RCA CTC185 XL-100 color set when I moved here. Had only one repair on it in all that time, when the RF port for the antenna/cable snapped off the PC board; the ground points around the troublesome on-board tuner were repaired at the same time, so I have not had any problems with the tuner. I also have a 13-year-old Zenith Sentry 2, 19-inch inline tube, that still works well but isn't used much these days, except for cross-checking if and when I have cable trouble.

Ah, memories. However, I must say that today's TV stations do a much better job with generating stable color signals than did earlier stations. Note that today's color sets do not have auto-color correction circuitry, at least not as we knew it 35+ years ago (Zenith's Color Sentry, Magnavox's Total Automatic Color, GE's VIR, et al.) as did a lot of '70s sets (remember that on a lot of color sets of that era, the "auto-color" button simply switched in preset controls which were probably set at the factory, using a color-bar generator rather than an air signal). They don't need them anymore (maybe just as well, as most of those auto-color schemes didn't work very well, with GE's VIR being one of the worst; many if not most people didn't use these systems anyway--probably didn't know they were there and left the defeat switch off. I don't think very many folks even knew where on the TV that switch was).

Today's color signals, especially on cable systems, are rock-stable. If I were a betting man (I'm not), I would bet that I haven't had to adjust the color controls of my XL-100 CTC185 more than a few times, and then only very slightly, since installing the set in the autumn of 1999, when I moved here. I don't even need the auto-color feature on that set, since as I said, the colors are extremely accurate and stable; the set produces what is, IMHO, the best picture of any TV I have ever owned in my life, comparable, as at least one person here has noted, to the picture on a '60s-'70s Zenith Chromacolor II. As well, the picture on my XL100 is every bit as good as that of my Zenith Sentry 2. Considering all the troubles (mostly defective CRTs and problems in the video circuitry, not to mention HV regulation problems) reported with Zenith color TVs of 1990s vintage, I consider myself extremely lucky that my set has held up all these years with no problems. I can't help but think I was just lucky to have gotten a set that was built to last, as Zeniths always were when the company was still the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago. Unfortunately, as I have noted in the Antique Radio forum regarding today's "Gold Star" built radios carrying the Zenith name and logo compared to older Zenith radios (not to mention today's standard CRT and flat-panel HDTVs with the Zenith logo below the CRT or panel), we will never again see the level of quality attained by the original Zenith Radio Corporation. Being a Zenith radio collector since 2002 and a fan of Zenith home-entertainment gear in general since 1969, when I got my first Zenith TV (a 1963 K2739 23" VHF-only console), it bothers me that the company went downhill so fast after Gold Star acquired them, but that's the way it goes, I guess--especially in these days of offshoring, outsourcing and such.