Anti-TV cartoon

[Captain Video]

Late at night I was zapping thru the channels and in one network they were showing a very old cartoon ( I guess late 1940's or very early 50's , by the style of the animation and by the looks of the everything in it, INCLUDING the TV sets ). In the cartoon, there was this bear-guy, walking in the city, when he stops in front of a store selling TV sets. In the door of the store they wrote: "you can look around and don't have to buy" , so he enters and the salesman talks him into buying a TV set. He leaves the shop carrying the TV in his arms, with wires around his body and a rooftop TV antenna in his back. He walks(!) to his house carrying that TV ( a TV that looks like those 1946/1947 RCAs, not the RCA 621, but the model that followed it ) and the wires, and the antenna. He has two little bears who are very happy that he bought the TV. Well, to make things short, every attempt he make to install the antenna and the TV ends in frustration AND in accidents, like electric shocks and falls from the roof. In the end the TV is destroyed. It all seemed just a funny cartoon joking with the difficulties people were facing in those early years of the Television Age, UNTIL the very end, when he is and his kids, with angry faces, returned to the TV shop with the parts of the broken set, and throwed it inside and broke the glass of the shop's door. They walk outside and shortly after ( surprise! ) with very happy faces they enter into a movie theater.

Did the producers of this thing DID really thought that such a piece would ACTUALLY convince someone not to buy a TV set and remain a ticket-payer at movie theaters? The movie industry was really desperate, to produce cartoons like that, in which the message is so explicity, so clear. I remember that in the 1930's something similar happened, when radio appeared some people screamed that the record industry was doomed to extinction.

I, and this is just my opinion, really don't believe in that kind of reasoning that "when a new technology appear, the old will cease to exist completely" . In a very few cases this is actually true ( like what's happening now, with DVDs; it's clear to me that the superiority of DVD over VHS is so obvious that it's just a matter of very short time until the only people using VHS will be the vintage electronic collector crowd ), but in most cases it's not . People didn't stopped to go to to theater when movies appeared, television didn't meant the end of radio and so on. That's why I really don't buy all this conversation that "the way people watch TV are going to change dramatically" because of all the new technologies; in the end of the day, the public will still be those millions of people who spent the day outside of the house working hard, and they will arrive at home so tired that they will not want to "interact" with the TV set, they will just want to relax, sit down and watch the shows in the same way people have been watching TV for more than 50 years.

[Aage]

Methinks you're reading waaay too much into that cartoon. It was rare for anything to be taken that seriously back then, especially in the movies. Well, unless it was communistic.

And the movies were where most people saw cartoons in the late '40s for the most part.

[bgadow]

Sounds like a neat cartoon! I think I would take it the same way, as anti-TV. There was some of this on radio with some comedians who were skeptical of the new medium so panned it. I suppose many at the time looked on it truly as a fad, and I'm sure there were some dishonest TV shops at the time seeing as how sets were selling like hotcakes.

[wa2ise]

There's an old marketing trick called "Fear, Uncertinaty, and Doubt" (FUD) that some marketers try to plant into the mind of customers. To disuade people from buying something from a competitor. Looks like this cartoon's producers were trying to FUD potential TV set buyers. "This thing really gonna work?".

[fujifrontier]

what is the title of this cartoon

[Captain Video]

Unfortunately, I really don't remember...It's been many, many days ago.

[JimJ[VT]]

What's amazing is that the MPAA, RIAA and others are still trying these "scare" tactics (FUD is a good one ) with the DMCA and other legislation...

Guess it shows that everything old is new again.

[Sandy G]

Oh, & I remember the stories of how this Tell-A-Vision thingamabob was gonna put the movies outta business toot sweet..Hollywood was gonna be a dustbowl by 1955 or so...Radio, too...Just like NOBODY in their right minds would pay good money to hear actors talk...(1928)...And they'd never go faster than the speed of sound (1947)...Ain't perdickshuns & the "experts" who make 'em WUNNERFUL ?!? <grin>

[JimJ[VT]]

And there would never be a market for a personal computer?

[fujifrontier]

apparently not