TV Repairs

In the 1960s I worked at RCA with a man (Fred Weubker) who had earlier worked for the RCA Service Co. That unit went into homes to repair tv’s and radios. Usually that meant simply replacing a burned out tube.

One day he was in the home of A rich owner of a jewelry store chain, installing an antenna. The owner was on the phone, yelling at someone at channel 5 tv in Philly, saying if that if they changed announcers for his commercials, he was no longer going to advertise on that station. The announcer was Dick Clark, and he was going to California to do American Bandstand.

Fred also told me of another guy who, after fixing a tv, would set the vertical hold control to get the picture to roll. He would then ask the lady owner to tell him which image was best, and then stop it from rolling She felt pleased to be part of the repair. But of course you never heard of a vertica hold control – they went out decades ago.