EE Times and Reuters are reporting that French Company, Thomson (marketed in the U.S. as RCA) is selling off their television production to India's Videocon.
This is sad from a number of points of view. RCA Victor (Sarnoff Labs, et al) with Nipper listening for his master's voice, are a part of Toob history here in the United States. And obviously, JVC (Victor Company of Japan) was a spin off back in the day.
RCA was NOT the first with color television here. [The first was an awkward and iffy electromechanical product.] The first electronic TV was a Westinghouse product.
But RCA became the winner of the standards race with their all-electronic products. And their March, 1954 launch of consumer color television sets (click the CT-100 to the right, courtesy of The Early Television Foundation) led to the color TV boom in the early 1960's in America.
The rest is history. Thomson closed the Marion Indiana, RCA Television plant in March of 2004, and has been moving out of the TV business ever since.
We'll have a conversation with The Early Television Museum and Foundation later in the week on this, and other subjects.
Here's the press release from Thomson, confirming the various reports of the disposal of their tube business.
As yet, there is no visible discussion of the disposal of their HD-DLP products, set-top-boxes, and miscellaneous other goods, but they can't be far behind, as Thomson states (and has done so for a couple of years) that they are not a consumer electronics company, but rather in the media and entertainment industries.
Per a post at AVS Forum, the Chinese company (TCL?) has bought most of the of the TV set (DLP) RCA business .
Posted by: DaSauce | 29 June 2005 at 12:30
How depressing
Posted by: tyson | 29 June 2005 at 18:57
It is very sad that America, the land of the free, needs to give up it's birthright in order to coddle and feed other countries. We have lost our identities in the world markeyplace. No one knows what the United States is a source for except providing soldiers for foreign wars and also the development of weaponry. How sad our original peace loving charter has turned us into a vigillant society. One day our "doom view" will do us in.
Posted by: Uncle | 30 June 2005 at 06:43
Well...
RCA has really been pretty much gone since the early or mid-eighties. Like Westinghouse coming back today, it is just an imprint, used by a firm outside the US. What killed our Toob biz was Japanese dumping of crap TeeVees in the 1960's and early 1970's (as they took a much longer term view of the biz than we did.) But then they improved, and the crap was coming from Korea.
But then they improved, and the crap now comes from China and India. Guess who owns the majority of our national debt (you know, the 380 B that we have spent on Iraq so far has to be paid by someone, right?)
It is no longer the Japanese... They owned our asses back in the 1990's before the bubble broke over there.
Nope. It is China. They own so much of us and our debt now that the Fed begins to worry about them dictating policy.
So, there are bigger worries than seeing the RCA imprint depart for now (however nostalgic one feels over it.)
Like does the shitty Chinese TV you own have the blood/sweat of prison labor as part of its make-up?
When our debt is this big, how much does Congress KOWTOW to China today due to them being in the pockets of Communist China?
Our Birthright? Hey! We’ve been kicked out of or ran away from every country on the planet! We’re Americans! Our birthright is robber-barons and folks who pillaged the very earth we are living upon.
Now… as to birthright, we ought to spend just a tad more time paying attention to the birthright of the next, next, next generations of Americans, hope they aren't all as dumb as Dubya, and don’t speak Chinese (as a first language.)
Happy-Go-Lucky-Rant-I-can’t-put-on-the-main-site ends.
Posted by: HeadToob | 30 June 2005 at 17:10
"Uncle" sounds like a John Kerry/Howard Dean fan. Specially the "Our birthright is robber-barons and folks who pillaged the very earth we are living upon" rant.
Posted by: chicho malanga | 14 September 2005 at 15:23
I bought the RCA 52" at walmart ! it worked for 1 day and blew up! what a turd
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