Word: phonograph
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This week, Chicago's Admiral Corp. announced that it would put out a console combination (radio, phonograph and ten-inch televiewer) at $399, by far the lowest-priced combination to date. Admiral's President Ross Siragusa said his company would soon follow up with cheaper models down the line. Other manufacturers conceded that ten-inchers, which now sell for $325 to $375, would have to be slashed and other models generally reduced to meet competition. Some dealers were already advertising "no charge for installation," "free inside antenna" and "90day free service" in an effort to clear their decks...
...tone and 22½-minute playing time on each side, represented a much needed technical advance. But they also cut into other record sales by carrying an entire symphony on one 12-inch record for $4.85 v. $8.50 for a six-record RCA Victor album. And L.P. records scared phonograph buyers off; they didn't want to buy phonographs that turned at the old speed, especially when rumors got around of the new Victor record...
This news was so calamitous to phonograph makers and record sellers that it threatened to drown out the joyful celebrating over the end of James C. Petrillo's ban* on recordings (see Music). Said one Chicago radio executive: "It raises chaos in the entire industry, just as a change in rail gauges would do to railroads...
Actually, the industry was in something like chaos already. The trouble started last June when Columbia Records brought out its long-playing Microgroove records (TIME, July 26), which play at 33⅓ r.p.m. Though the industry grumbled, and phonograph owners had to buy an attachment to play the records, Columbia had scored an impressive beat...
Despite Christmas shopping, record sales were off 40% for the year from 1947. Sales of phonographs, already hit by television sales, were also down. In Manhattan, one desperate dealer offered up to $50 worth of records free with every table model and $200 worth with every radio-phonograph console...