Word: siragusa
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With competition in the U.S. television industry growing hotter by the day, manufacturers were cudgeling their brains for new ways to trim costs and prices. In Chicago, Admiral Corp.'s quick-stepping President Ross Siragusa thought he knew a good way to do it. On the big, fancy-looking console jobs, about one-third of the cost went into furniture. Why not start cutting there...
...Siragusa talked it over with his younger brother Dominic, 35, who runs Chicago's Molded Products Corp. For $90,000, Dominic had picked up a huge, 2,000-ton-pressure hydraulic molding press which had once stamped out shell casings...
...Siragusa had to knock the roof off his plastics plant to lower the 40-foot press into place on its 6-ft.-thick concrete base. Finally, the hissing, throbbing monster (Dom calls it "Gargantua") was ready for trial. It pressed down on $6.50 worth of preheated blocks of phenol plastic and molded a complete 35-lb. cabinet, the biggest plastic "casting" made...
...angriest reaction came from trigger-tempered Ross Siragusa of Admiral Radio, who got wind that the ad was to run and fired a volley of telegrams to newspapers warning them to check with the FCC before running it. Eleven of the 41 newspapers in Zenith's schedule canceled the ad. The TV-station-owning Detroit News ran it, but also published an answer. Gist of the News''s retort: "Anyone . . . who denies himself . . . the thrill of television because of 'frequency changes' could grow old and grey waiting for the change that may never come...
...Siragusa also blasted the Zenith claim as "very poor advertising, about the poorest taste I ever saw . . . Nobody knows how or where or when the proposed new bands will fall." Admiral's Adman Seymour Mintz cried indignantly: "The public doesn't even know what a turret tuner is. All you have to do is put in some new condenser strips for higher frequencies. Just take out the old and put in the new. Why throw a scare into people before you need...