What happened to the plants/brands?

[Telecolor 3007]

What is the today's sitution of the U.S.A. plants that manufactured tv sets and tv sets components? What is the situation of the tv sets brands ("R.C.A.", "Zenith", "G.E.", "Sylvania" etc.)?
If some is intrested, I'll tell about the situation in Romania.

[vintagecollect]

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[Sandy G]

Kinda reminds me of what happened to Packard when they got this new hotshot boss who instituted the merger w/Studebaker...Virtually ALL the records, archives, parts, some early cars, etc, were all sent to the dump.. Some items were saved by a few caring souls in the styling dept. Packard had been very careful to document the history of their company from the beginning, & it all went away almost overnight. Telecolor, Packard was an American car company that operated from like 1899 til 1958. They made some very fine cars that were the equal of the best on either side of the Atlantic.

[kx250rider]

The Packard-Bell TV plant at Olympic & Bundy in Los Angeles (not related to the Packard automobile) is now a Cadillac dealer and some rented offices. The Kaye-Halbert plant (3555 Hayden Ave, Culver City, CA) is now a dental lab. Similar stories for others, I'm sure....

And as for the Studebaker-Packard merger: that last "Packard" was a disgrace! It was a '53 Studebaker with HUGE UGLY fiberglass tail fins, and too much crap added onto the original body design. No wonder they went out of business. The glorious Packard luxury cars and the miserly Studebaker cars did not mix. Almost as bad as a "Zenith" TV with a Gold Star chassis. Sad.

Charles

[Telecolor 3007]

Some one around here put last year a picture or two of an old "R.C.A." plant that had red brick walls (I think it was the Indiana plant).
I didn't undrestand why they had to destroy the old spare parts from "R.C.A."? So you can buy theyrs junk?
The "GoldStar" tv sets sold in Romania where very good. Some of them are still runing after 10-15 yrs. I dind't heard so good opinions about "LG". Dind't "LG" took over "Zenith"?
Talking about distroying, the archives of the plant from Bucharest that manufactured buses and trolleybuses where destroyed. The plant runed out off business in 2002. I wonder if any transport society holds datas about it - and if they have some datas, they are considering it "secret" - it's Romania (no comment).
I thought idiot people that are destroying the archives are only in Romania, but, unfourtnely I was wrong.

[NowhereMan 1966]

It's sad to see that we are losing a lot of our history, not to mention the loss of parts and stuff, when it comes to our electronics industry and products. In fact, it seems like the "brain drain" is going on in other areas too. I guess the "brain drain" is universal, it is the same in Romania as it is here.

I do have three Zeniths, two of them made by "The Zenith Radio Corp" in Chicago (a 1970 Chromocolor and 1982 System 3, our current set), a 1998 19" Zenith, I guess it would be a Goldstar, a good set it seems, but no match for the 1982 model. I also have two RCA's, my 1975 B&W portable and grandmother's remote control XL-100 from about 1979/80 (I'd like to score some parts for it as well as for the System 3), the XL-100 would give me color in my room again, the 1998 Zenith is backup to the 1982 as well as we have both going when NASCAR and NFL are on at the same time. B-) . I have a lone black and white Sony, circa 1966 or so, it is a VT-110 video monitor with a UHF and VHF tuner, it resembles the Sony TV quite a bit that is seen in the Beatles' Sgt Pepper Album. The Sony is in my room and I use it for my Playstation, it is weird playing Playstation in black and white. B-) I wish I did have the 1962 RCA B&W set my grandmother had and promised me when she passed on, it is at least 17", at least it would be easier to run the Playstation on that set. B-)

I don't know the status of all the TV companies, I have a 1993 RCA camcorder, the JVC I wanted, the store was out of but the RCA was the same exact model with a different name. They were both owned by Thompson Electronics in France at the time.

[vintagecollect]

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[Sandy G]

I've heard the old Hallicrafters plant in Chicago still survives, but is condos or something now..There used to be a site where you could go & see pics of all the old car plants in the Detroit area, w/some of the magnificent hotels , stores & other bldgs, in the sad states of decline that they're in now.. I went there a couple times, & ended up sobbing...<sigh>

[Bill Cahill]

Yeh, and Ford motor companny just announced it is making offers for early retirement to all it's emplyees, hoping to cut work forces drastically. They want to close manny plants more. They call it "restructuring". I call it a nearly dead companny. Shame on them for selling out to toreign trades.

[bgadow]

Something I had been thinking about, and this is as good a place to post it as any...the peak for production of color tv sets in the US (as far as the number of manufacturers) had to have been in about 68-70. I can think of the following companies which made their own, unique color tv sets (not RCA clones or otherwise brand engineered) in the United States in that era:

Admiral
Emerson/DuMont
General Electric
Magnavox
Motorola
Packard-Bell
Philco-Ford
RCA
Setchell-Carlson
Sylvania/GTE
Warwick (for Sears)
Wells-Gardner (for numerous other companies)
Westinghouse
Zenith

Another I'm not sure about is Olympic-I can't say whether they were RCA clones or a unique design?

That is a lot of companies cranking out a rather high-end product here in the states, each with its own sales & distribution networks. That long list would not last for long:

By the end of 1970 Emerson/DuMont had ended production (became a reseller) and Westinghouse & Setchell-Carlson were gone (as well as Olympic).

By the end of 1975 Motorola had sold the TV line to Matsushita, Ford had sold the Philco consumer electronics business to GTE/Sylvania & Teledyne Packard-Bell had given up as well. The Magnavox consumer electronics business had been sold to Philips.
I think Warwick dissappeared around this time frame.

By the end of 1980 (give or take) Rockwell put Admiral consumer electronics out of its misery; GTE sold Sylvania/Philco to Philips.

Then in the later 80s GE bought RCA and sold that consumer electronics division to Thomson; around that time Wells-Gardner was, I believe, building its last TV sets.

That left Zenith which by the 90s was building most of its stuff in Mexico or Asia.

The last I heard there was a small company assembling TV sets under contract, and it was American owned. I forget the name but they were located in an old North American Philips plant in Tennessee.

If I have made any mistakes in the above please let me know.

[peverett]

An off topic comment about Ford and the other American auto makers. I believe that they are still paying for what they did in the 1970s to some extent. I can tell many horror stories about American cars from that era. As this was when many baby-boomers, including myself, just began buying their first cars, when they got a raw deal from the American makers and saw good quality in the Japanese brands, their buying habits were set for life.

As far as the US car quality now, I think that in general, it is competitive. We have driven a 1983 Ford Ranger 290,000 miles and a 1992 Escort 170, 000 miles without major issues(other than too much plastic). I just bought a new Ranger, but it is too young to comment on its quality.

[andy]

Originally Posted by peverett

As far as the US car quality now, I think that in general, it is competitive. We have driven a 1983 Ford Ranger 290,000 miles and a 1992 Escort 170, 000 miles without major issues(other than too much plastic). I just bought a new Ranger, but it is too young to comment on its quality.

My Mazda Tribute (Ford Escape) just hit 90,000 and it's had no major problems. The most major thing I've had to do to it was new front brakes. There have been a few other minor problems such as a leaking coolant hose that I handled myself. It's never left me stranded.

While the first 90,000 have been encouraging, the next 90,000 miles will play a larger role in whether or not I will buy another American car.

[Telecolor 3007]

Please, no more off-topic about cars.

[colortrakker]

Originally Posted by bgadow

The last I heard there was a small company assembling TV sets under contract, and it was American owned. I forget the name but they were located in an old North American Philips plant in Tennessee.

That'd be Five Rivers. They bought the plant from Philips in the '90s to manufacture for Philips, Samsung and Akai, among other brands. They're now under Chapter 11 protection.

[dtuomi]

There was this list of television brands that were sold in the U.S.:

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1960-2000-TVManufacturers.htm

It doesn't really say when they were made or not made in the U.S., but might be a good starting point for such a list.

David