Tony Meloche wrote:

I agree. When I was knee-high (mid fifties) TV repair shops were
swamped with work, and many "8 to 4:30" guys studied nights to learn TV
repair, and made it into a lucrative sideline. The original TV chassis
(save the Muntz, for one) had around 32 tubes on the board besides the
CRT. They were in the shop three, sometimes four times a year as a
matter of course, as they slowly cooked themselves to death. People
accepted it as part of the miracle of "pictures through the air".
Madman Muntz designed a 17 tube chassis (some double duty some cut
corners) and they were very reliable sets - maybe into the shop once or
twice a year (we had one for years).

Craig M is right - Assuming they pass the "infant mortality" stage,
todays electronics last about exactly as long as it takes for people to
*want* a new one - for better features or whatever reason.

Tony


Yes, there were a lot of "Tube changers" out there who called
themselves TV repairmen. At one time there were over 50 so called "TV
shops in Middletown Ohio. Only a few could really troubleshoot a TV set
with real problems, and they were the ones who were in business till a
few years ago. Now, there isn't one shop left in a town of over 50,000
people. In the '70s it cost around 10,000 to equip a van for TV service
calls, unless all you did was pick up the TV and haul it to the shop for
the bench techs to work on. I ran some TV shops in the late '70s and
saw the costs. It was over $100 in taxes and insurance just to open the
doors of a shop that didn't have a mortgage or rent payment. Then you
had to make enough money to pay the wages, buy parts, pay for the phone
and gasoline. Basically, you had to take in about 300 a day to keep the
doors open, and a TV service call was $17.50, for the trip and first
half hour, plus 17.50 per hour after that.

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida