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Originally Posted by Tubejunke
So in short, bad business moves hurt the great corporation and the great and over engineered sets targeted to the lesser population of "upper class" folks ended up being junk that was targeted more to the many "working class" folks, but it was too late.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by wa2ise
There aren't that many people in the "top 1%". And likely a good fraction of them will buy a "good enough" TV set, and not spend the extra money even though they could easily afford it. They'll probably buy the top end RCA but not the DuMont set.
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Ahhhh, but you're both forgetting that only the middle class and upper class could afford a TV. It cost a pile of money, many thousands of dollars in today's inflated currency.
In 1953, an RCA CT-100, a 12" console, sold for $1,000. that's about $15,000 to $20,000 in today's money. A car cost about $1,500 by comparison, and the annual salary of a professional was $5,000. A factory worker made about $1,500 to $2,000.
The fancier televisions—RCA, Stromberg-Carlson, etc.—were sold to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals. The blue-collar factory workers bought the lower-priced second and third-tier lines, and the cost was still substantial. But since there wasn't a lot else to spend money on, and rent or a mortgage was far lower percentage of salary than today (about 1/3 of what it is today) it was an acceptable purchase.