It's sad to see so many shops going away.
I've seen a lot of statistics about this phenomenon, and it's shocking (no pun). The best I can put together is that when I started in business in 1985, there were about 45,000 TV/radio service businesses in the USA. The last survey I saw (from the Professional Service Association) says that there are only a little more than 7,000 of us left. It appears that the manufacturers are not too worried about the drain. The way they build stuff now days, you often can't fix it anyway, and even if you
CAN fix it, sometimes they simply
WON'T sell the parts needed to do it. That has been my experience with LCD sets. I have had several come in that I could fix if I had the parts, but the manufacturer won't sell them. (or doesn't have any)
It makes me wonder if there will be any of us left doing this in 5 years.
Maybe I should learn to speak Chinese