Weekly television digest (Jan-Dec 1963)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

NEW SERIES VOL. 3, No. 43 TELEVISION DIGEST-9 it was developed jointly with its Tampa franchiser. Program has been operating in Tampa for about 6 months, ’’with great success,” Hertz told us, adding; ”The results have been so encouraging that this certainly is an area in which we are going to move.” Franchiser has displays in several outlets of big Eckerd Drugs chain. Display is one ft. wide, 4 ft. long, 7 ft. high. "It should be especially effective in N. Y. ,” we were told, 'Tjecause space here is at such a premium.” Hertz's TV rental business to date is running well ahead of year ago. For 2nd straight year. World Series demand "ran us out of TV sets here in N. Y. overnight.” Baseball classic. Hertz said, vies with Christmas & summer vacation season as peak TV rental season. Milton Cohen, Hertz vp & gen, mgr, of RentAll Div., told us over -all TV rental volume is "not only much higher than a year ago but high enough for us to rethink our inventory and warehouse situation. We' re holding discussions with TV set manufacturers right now with view to greatly increasing our inventory for next year. Sony Micro TV set "is very hot with us here in N. Y. ,” Hertz noted. "We don't know why exactly unless it's the size & convenience.” It can't be rental price, because rates are markedly higher on the little 5-in. set. Tinyvision TV rents for $17 for one week, $25 for 2, $30 for 3, $35 for month. Comparatively, 19-in. set rents for $13 for one week, $17 for 2, $21 for 3, $25 for month. Tinyvision battery pack is available for additional charge of $5 for one week, $7.50 for 2, $9 for 3, $12.50 for month. Japanese 5-incher is displayed in Hertz Rent -All window, attracts considerable attention. "It's not a brand name situation,” Hertz told us. "People usually come in after scanning our display window. They usually ask 'what does that little one rent for?' They rarely ask for sets by brand name.” Hertz entered Rent-All business some 3 years ago (Vol. 16:40 pl5), has grown to 21 outlets in 15 cities— up from 18 in 13 at end of 1962 (Vol. 2:53 p8). Company operates 5 of the stores— 3 in Chicago, one in N. Y., one in Highland Park, N. J. Franchised outlets are in Cincinnati (2); Columbus; Dayton; Huntington, L. I. ; Lewiston, Me.; Louisville; Norfolk; St. Louis (4); South Bend; Spokane; Tampa; West Hartford, Conn. Rental firm is continuing push into leased departments in department stores. Via franchisers, it now has rent-all departments in Shillito, Cincinnati, and main store and 2 branches of Stix, Baer & Fuller, St. Louis. "We are moving further into the department store field,” Hertz told us, "and currently are dickering with Stern Bros, in N. Y. , among others. ” Hertz's TV rental business still is restricted to b&w sets. "There is some demand for color,” we were told, "but we have not responded because of the service problems. However, it is inevitable that we'll get into color— but we've set no timetable yet.” TV-RADIO PRODUCTION; EIA statistics for week ended Oct. 18 (42nd week of 1963) excluding 11-in. and smaller; Oct, 12-18 Preceding wk. 1962 wk. ’63 cumulative '62 cumulative Black & white TV. . . 158,670 154,472 137,618 5,659,824 5,297,522 Total radio 523,810 502,809 461,783 14,390, 145 15,259,041 Auto radio 254,989 233,799 172,799 6,203,817 5,515,493 TOPICS & TRENDS Photo finish between Zenith & RCA for title of No. 1 TV producer seems likely this year. RCA Sales Corp. said last week that it had passed millionmark in factory TV sales in Sept.— 3 months ahead of its millionth set last year. Zenith announced earlier that its distributor-to-dealer sales topped million mark in 9 months of 1963 (Vol. 3:40 p9). Best guess is that Zenith will be No. 1 in unit TV sales this year, RCA No. 1 in TV dollar volume. Cinerama hopes to hold demonstrations of Telcan home video tape recorder (Vol. 3:36 p7) in N.Y. & London within 6 weeks, company spokesman told us last week.