[Jeffhs]

I bet those Zeniths didn't sell well in northeastern Ohio or other areas with mixed high- and low-band TV stations; here's why. The city of Cleveland has channels 3, 5 and 8. To go from channel 3 to channel 5, for example, would mean turning the tuner knob at least one revolution, and from channel 5 to 8 would require another complete switch through most of the channels. Depending on how much the set was used and how often channels were changed, the tuner could wear out within a year.

These sets were obviously made for markets like New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, Portland, Oregon and others with channel lineups that matched (or were very close to) the channel arrangement of the tuner.

New York and Los Angeles are the only two TV markets with seven VHF channels that exactly match the Zenith's channel knob. As VK member wa2ise mentioned, this tuner would work perfectly in areas between New York and Philadelphia stations, since the former would be in the 2-4-5-7-9-11-13 range and the latter in the lower 3-6-8-10-12 range. The only blank channel in the latter range would probably be channel 8, unless the set owner were in an area that could receive all New York stations; channel 8 would be in New Haven, Connecticut, near NYC if I remember correctly. Channel 12 would likely be blank in Philadelphia in 1955, depending on when the educational TV station in Wilmington, Delaware on that channel went on the air.

I've only seen one Zenith TV with a tuner arranged like this. Was this TV very popular in markets outside the ones I mentioned above? I would think not, due to the way the channels are arranged. This set may have had a great picture and all, but I would think most set owners in cities with more than three channels in a straight line, i. e. 3, 5, 8 or 2, 4, 7 (Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo), would quickly get tired of having to flip through unused channels just to get to the local channel they wanted to watch.