The eairly 70s, more BW or Color??

[ctc17]

Im curious what yall think or remember.
In the year say 1972 what were the majority of household sets? BW table top or console. Color table top or console?

I would imagine color consoles were more of a middle class good credit thing as they cost around $600.

[jr_tech]

Sales or ownership?
My guess is that around that time a lot of color sets were being sold. Smaller color sets like CTC22s and 12" Trinitrons to the younger generation, Consoles to the older folks. A few of us "poor starving young engineer" types were keeping second hand (or worse) CTC4s, and other similar sets going, but they were fading fast!
jr

[RobtWB]

I believe it was region specific. The larger cities and more affluent areas had many more color sets - look at all of the sets found around Chicago.

At that time, '72, our clan had a late 60's truetone color tabletop set on a cart.

I believe we also had a couple of gifted b/w consoles, specifically an Admiral and an RCA.

I remember my friends as having only one color set in their households, but all of them had smaller b/w sets.

Around here I believe the turning point was in the later '70's. Seems like most families had more than 1 color set, and I remember color sets beginning to far outnumber the b/w's at the retailers. Coincidentally this is the time that cable television made its appearance in southern Illinois.

[sampson159]

i remember the "color"wave of the mid 60s.it went big here in columbus ohio.by the early 70s everyone had a color set in there home.a small b/w set maybe in a bedroom but a color console in the main room.families sat together and actually interacted with each other instead of a family vacation,it was a family television evening.our peak years at the shop were from 1966-1975.i missed a few years because of army service,but when i got back it was booming!after 1975 it died down slightly for years.then around 1981-82 we boomed again.all those sylvania 25vdmp22 s needing replaced!

[radiotvnut]

Somewhere, I think I remember reading in what year color TV sales surpassed the sale of B&W sets; but, I can't remember the year. I'm sure it wasn't any later than the early '70's. However, there must have been enough people buying large screen B&W sets during the '70's. Otherwise, they would have not been available as recent as the early '80's. I know Sylvania made a solid state 22" B&W console as recent as '78 and I saw an Admiral built Truetone B&W console from '79. I think Zenith discontinued their large screen B&W sets in '81. Also, 19" B&W sets continued to be made at least through the mid '80's.

Growing up during the '80's and '90's, most people that I had anything to do with were still using color consoles that ranged in age from the late '60's until the early '90's. Most of the B&W sets were used in the kitchen, bedroom, kid's room, camper, etc. I don't recall ever seeing a large screen B&W console in use in someone's home. However, I have ran into a few people who only had a 12"/17"/19" B&W portable as their main set. These people were usually senior citizens or minorities.

BTW, I think '77 must have been a big color TV year around here. I base that on the fact that I've found a load of color TV's from '77.

[bgadow]

I know I've read, more than once, what the year was. I think 1972, though it might have been 1968. It was also in that time period that Zenith first outsold RCA.

Growing up it seemed like everybody had a console. I thought it pretty strange to walk into a house and all they had was a 19" table model. The only person I knew as a kid who did not have a color TV was my grandfather-a cheapskate! He had a GE bw that I think was no bigger than 19". Sometime in the first half of the 80s he relented and got a 13" color.

[radiotvnut]

Even though most people we knew had consoles, we only had a 19" color TV on a roll around cart (mainly due to space limitations). When my uncle passed away in '94, we ended up with his early '80's Zenith System 3 console. After about a year, it blew it's third or fourth 9-160 module and I replaced it with a '70's Zenith CCII that I picked up.

[JCFitz]

We got our first color set when I was in 2nd grade around 1975. My mom and dad were divorced and I lived with my mom so all she could afford was a used GE 19". Then she remarried in 77' and we "upgraded" to a Sears 25" console. One of infamous troublemaker Warwick chassis from 1974.It had a problem the whole time we had it where the sound would go out and get real low and distorted and a hit to the side would make it work again. It broke down about once a year with various problems but never went dead completely til late 1 night in 1983 when my mom was watching the tv it quit. She bought a new Zenith 19" Advanced System 3 remote set and we placed it on the console which was covered with a table cloth. went down in screen size but gained remote control.That tv lasted until the early 90s trouble free until lightening fried it. I did fix and sell the Sears-Warwick tv years later.The audio issue came back to haunt the new owner also. Also my grandmother on my mom's side had a b/W console until 1976 when she bought a Sylvania 21" GT Matic console. My grandmother on my dad's side never owned a color tv.She claimed color tvs hurt her eyes.Still was watching a 13" b/w in the nursing home before she died in 1990.

[Eric H]

All we had was a 19" B&W portable until about 1979.

[jstout66]

Our first color set was used. Got it from my Uncle in 70 or 71 (as he had a TV sales/repair shop) It was one of those RCA 19" mini consoles. I think a CTC-19.
The flyback went out in 77 or 78, and then we got another used set from him. A HUGE 66 Zenith Space Command. Before we got it, he installed a new flyback and a new Zenith Chormacolor picture tube. My parents had that till the late 80's. I think the yoke went out in it.
When I worked with him in the shop (starting in 1978), there were a TON of CTC-38's on our service route. A handful of CTC-16's, a few Zenith roundies, and a few Motorolas. Not very many had B&W as their main set. Mainly older farm couples still had B&W. I do remember alot of tube sets getting junked out by the late 70's,early 80's.
That was about the same time small B&W sales dropped off, as people would get a color set for a second TV.

[kx250rider]

I grew up in a middle-income section of West Los Angeles... In 1972-74 when I started being fascinated with TV sets, the households near us (mostly World War II vets with children grown & gone), had mainly one console color set (most still roundies), and their old B&W would be in the porch or in a back guest room. Not many had bedroom sets yet. A few; probably 10%, still had B&W-only households. A few (1 in 10) kids my age had a 9" or 12" B&W set of their own. My family had GE 21" B&W console in the livingroom, and my mother had a 12" Hitachi color set which she bought for herself in 1970. We couldn't afford a color console, and my Grandma didn't want one anyway. So that's why my mother bought herself the little Hitachi.

My wife says that in the upper income part of Dallas where she grew up, it was about the same. Most had at least one color set, and the difference being that most of her peers had a little B&W set in the kids rooms; as opposed to very few in my neighborhood. Also she recalls that some of the wealthiest had a TV-stereo-phono combo unit.

Charles

[old_tv_nut]

relevant chart - look at curves for "televison" and "color TV"

http://findwhatworks.files.wordpress...y-adoption.jpg

[Robert Grant]

I forget exactly where I heard it (some convention, either ETF or a DXer group) that 1972 was both the year color TV reached 50% of american households, and the first year that sales of color TV sets surpassed sales of monochrome sets in the USA.

Quite an achievement, as, in equivalent picture size, color TV cost about 3 times as much as black-and-white at the time, with a typical 25" consolette color TV being about the same as two or three months' house payment (and remember, we are talking about one speaker, and no remote control).

Most of my friends had in 1972 exactly what we had. A 23" color consolette in the living room, and a 22" VHF-only B&W consolette in the master bedroom (the same set that had been the only set in the house before the color set came),

A third set, 9" or 12" all-channel B&W portable, new, and more often in a daughter's bedroom or the kitchen than the son's room, was not uncommon, and not much later this set would be color.

In lower-middle to middle class families, the main set could still quite possibly be a black-and-white, especially if the head-of-household was older.

The larger B&W sets were the first to be pulled out of production. Though some VKers have tracked a few 22" sets from around 1980, by about 1973 this type of set was essentially finished. 19" B&W sets would continue to be available for a few more years, but the monochrome market was really driven by the 12", now cheap, and whose sales would be healthy into the late 1980's. The downfall of the inexpensive 12-inch set was the widespread adoption of mid-band and super-band channel cable, which made traditional mechanical tuners obsolete, and this narrowed the price gap between color and B&W sets.

I believe the last 12" B&W sets were the "prison TVs" like the KTV 1210-CLR, a real weirdo with electronic pushbutton controls, on-screen indicators, and a clear plastic cabinet (so owners could not hide drugs or makeshift weapons in the TV).

Very cheap 5" B&W battery-powered sets, with a simple mechanical tuner that worked like a radio (and often included radio reception), costing as little as $15 toward the end, were still being sold right up to the digital transition in 2009, even though buyers should have known these sets were to become obsolete very soon (sure, they could be hooked up to cable, a VCR, or a DTC, but that detracted from the most important feature of such a set - portability). My kludge of a Zinwell box with batteries to such a set has been fun, but most people would consider it a PITA. Strangers have been VERY amused seeing me operate the kludge.

[radiotvnut]

I saw one of those later KTV B&W prison TV's with electronic tuning on ebay, for an insane price. If I could find one priced at what it should be, I'd pick it up just for the novelty of it. And, don't forget those early '80's Zenith 12" and 19" B&W sets that had a digital keypad tuner with red LED readout. I've only seen two such sets in person. One was a 12" set in perfect condition for $25 at a yard sale, back around '90-'91. Since I wasn't into collecting TV's at the time and since $25 was about the most I could have gotten for it, I left it there. Then, around 2000-01, a TV shop gave me the 19" version. It had been in an accident and suffered a broken CRT neck and busted CRT socket; so, that one got junked. Now, I realize that I should have bought that little 12" set and tracked down a CRT for the 19". I know these are not high dollar sets; but, they don't turn up that often.

The last consumer grade 12" B&W sets I remember seeing were from the mid '90's, cost $39.99, had standard rotary tuners, were very cheaply made, ran off a 12V wall wart, and carried the "Action" brand.

I still see those last run 5" sets all over the place. Not long before the DTV transition, one of the local dollar stores had a ton of them for $14.99/each. They are cheap Chinese junk; but, are still interesting to play around with. And, they were the last B&W sets sold over here. What's comical is that I still see these being sold by ignorant sellers who think they are worth $25-$30 used.

One day, I'm going to find the perfect "non collectable" AC/DC 12" B&W and I'm going to mount the guts out of a DTV converter inside the TV. After making the correct electrical connections, I'll add switches to the outside of the TV in order to control the DTV tuner. Then, I'll have my "bad weather / power outage" TV and won't have the clutter of a seperate box.

[dieseljeep]

I have four RCA Securevision clear plastic prison sets that were built in 2008. Picked them up for between $5.00 and $10.00 each. They have a built DTV converter board. They even get basic HD from the cable.