Zenith's demise.

[stereofisher]

Anyone know of the final days of Zenith Corp? Its really sad we let so many US companies fail by not protecting them from subsidizied foreign labor. It was unfair. So many workers lost thier jobs needlessly We have let far too many companies fall needlessly.

Any one here know know the history of Zenith from say 1980 to when they sold what was left to Goldstar--yech!? We really need an administration with enough balls to put tarriffs on the cheap stuff coming here. Goldstar is slowly ruining the home appliance business. They are stealing patented designs from Maytag and Whirlpool. Korea has no laws on copy rights or patents. We need to start protecting whats left of US business against unfair business practices.

Sorry for the vent. Its too bad our companies have given up I miss Zenith, RCA, Motorola, etc. Both radio and TV.

Eric

[Sandy G]

Oh, it gets better all the time, pal. Last year, my uncle read in the "Wall Street Journal" there is virtually NOTHING made in the good ol' USA anymore that can't be made much cheaper in the Land of Yellow Peril. My dad's in cahoots w/this little farm machinery mfger in Texas, they got an inquiry from John Deere to make a part they've designed for JD. So we sent JD 2 of them, never heard back. Guarantee JD sent the parts to China, to see what they can be made for over there, which will prolly be 30% underneath our cost. It's a cryin' shame-pretty soon, there won't be any manufacturing base left in this country, at the rate we're going now. We thought Japan, Inc. was tough back in the '80s-the Chinese make them look like a Sunday-school picnic !!-Sandy G.

[sydsfloyd67]

I recall 'Zenith Radio Coporation" in Chicago. Correct? Chicago was a good place to grow up in in terms of radio through the 60-70-80s. WXRT may still even exist today.

-sf

[sydsfloyd67]

-and I heard Zenith was the last to manufacturer a television built in the US. IFIC, this had something to do with the Thompson Consumer Electronic Corp in Bloomington IN in the early 90s (true or false?)
-sf

There are actually quite a few TV plants operating in this country and at least one, maybe two that build private label sets.

The irony of the chinese mass production miracle is that they best us without firing a shot.....and they used the free market capitalist system to do it!! Do NOT get me started!!!!

Anthony

[OvenMaster]

Last I'd heard, Zenith had been taken over by Gold Star after bankruptcy troubles. There IS an American owned TV manufacturer in Kentucky, I believe, which makes sets for various famous brand names. If they'd not fought and won a federal lawsuit accusing Chinese manufacturers of dumping their products, even this company would have folded. I saw this on a PBS special about Wal-Mart about two months ago.

Tom

http://www.zenith.com/sub_about/about_corp_history.html

That's who I was referring to......also saw that same PBS show.

What's even more frightening is that there are only a couple of machine tool companies left in America....South Bend Lathe who once employed thousands now has about a dozen people on staff.

DISGUSTING

*EVERY*thing is based on machine tools---this is the answer to the chicken and the egg....if you don't have machine tools then you're back to a purely manual agriculture based society.

Anthony

[asynchronousman]

Originally Posted by sydsfloyd67

I recall 'Zenith Radio Coporation" in Chicago. Correct? Chicago was a good place to grow up in in terms of radio through the 60-70-80s. WXRT may still even exist today.

-sf

Zenith doesn't nor do it's following incarnations own any US broadcasting stations...foreign owned. Before you get started on NBC/Universal, Universal has always been an American company with foreign subsidiaries and I do beleve Viviendi sold to Universal...please correct me if I'm wrong.

US 99, as the spot on the Zenith radios supposedly denotes, probably exists as something at that frequency, but not an arm of Zenith.

[sydsfloyd67]

Originally Posted by heathkit tv

There are actually quite a few TV plants operating in this country ....Anthony

Where, and what set/brand is that?
thanks

-sf

[asynchronousman]

I was only aware of Sony's plants but I'd suspect another Eastern giant has plants too.

[maxm]

Zenith stopped making thair Black and White TVs here in the 70s, moving production to Taiwan. Some of their color TVs began to be assembled in Mexico in the early 80s, but they continued to make their consoles, CRTs, and a few table models here. I believe that Toshiba or Sharp may be assembling TVs here. Most of those big projection TVs are made in America.

[Yamaha B-2]

Sony used to make color TVs in S.CA. Then moved to Mexico. They can't even compete in Mexico. Moved back to Asia. But, the Japanese are in about the same boat that we are. Except for the very high-end stuff, they can't afford to make in Japan, either. What goes around comes around. If we can survive. Chinese (both of them) and Korea, etc., are simply too cheap and too good. With everything being automated they only need to train folks as drones. Worker-bees.

Last company I was with in TX is making money hand-over-fist at the moment. Not because they are so good (but, since I built the place and ran it for the first five years, how could they be anything else ) but because the exchange rate on the dollar makes our high-tech goods very cheap overseas. And we made double-side polished wafers and special epi wafers, so are in somewhat of a nitch market. But, in the long-run, they won't last, either. Will simply be overwhelmed by the cheap labor in Asia once they decide to attack the market. Nothing new under the sun.

[Sandy G]

I'll bet a dollar to a donut within 5 years-10 at the outside- we'll see Chinese made cars here. Sure, they'll be shit at first-but they'll soon get the hang of it. They may even be Cadillacs. Yep, GM is reputedly gonna build a plant over there to make Caddys-they sell that many over there & figure the potential market is nearly limitless. Only real problem is that China doesn't have much of a modern road network-yet. China's insatiable demand for cars is one major thing that's got gas prices so high here-and it ain't gonna get much better, I'm afraid.-Sandy G.

[cmonty]

I fear you will win that bet even sooner. I recall a news report about a Chinese car that is supposed to show up here in about 18 months. Something in the same league as the old Yugo.

[bgadow]

Yeah, they are building Buicks over there now, but not importing them here yet. But the engine in one of the new Chevy's is made in China. There is a company working on bringing a Chinese car here very soon if they can jump it through all the hoops.

I was in a lowbuck discount store today, they had Orion 27" tv sets with American flags on them. I didn't bother walking over to see if they were a)made in the us b)rebuilt in the us (store sells lots of rebuilt stuff). It would seem like the easiest thing to do would be to import the boards from China then make the crt and cabinet here and throw it all together. Since those components are just empty boxes really why ship them around the globe? And not much labor to slap them together. But with a smaller set, 13" certainly, they are compact enough to just ship the whole works.

Saw a 13" color Zenith that looked to be c.1980 and it had an address on the back of Missouri.

My understanding is that Zenith mfg. is all gone, Thompson left in the late 90s, but that NAP is still running to some extent, maybe just big screens, down in Knoxville?