1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:06,080 No matter who you are, star athlete, charismatic tech news host, or eastern block dictator, 2 00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:14,080 holding on to power is a difficult task. And perhaps few people realize this more than the people behind the iconic TV brands of 3 00:00:14,080 --> 00:00:19,440 yesteryear. There's a good chance you remember a time when iconic brands like Zenith were found 4 00:00:19,440 --> 00:00:24,320 in every hotel room and store shelves were chock full of RCA TVs. 5 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:28,160 But these days, they've all but vanished. So what the heck happened? 6 00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:32,720 A lot of major brands that we were used to seeing here in North America were domestically 7 00:00:32,720 --> 00:00:38,080 based and it's no secret that tons of manufacturing has left the United States and is now based 8 00:00:38,080 --> 00:00:43,760 in China. You can learn about the rise of Chinese electronics in this video, but it doesn't tell the whole 9 00:00:43,760 --> 00:00:47,600 story of what specifically happened to those old TV makers. 10 00:00:47,600 --> 00:00:52,720 To a large extent, the US TV industry became architects of their own demise. 11 00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:57,600 Although major American TV manufacturers once were global brands, they couldn't sell in 12 00:00:57,600 --> 00:01:03,760 every major market. And a very important one, Japan, had serious legal hurdles that made it tough for foreign 13 00:01:03,760 --> 00:01:10,240 companies to sell products there. So instead, they licensed their tech out to Japanese electronics firms, hoping to reap 14 00:01:10,240 --> 00:01:19,080 profits off of royalties. But instead, Japanese companies took the technology and actually improved on it. 15 00:01:19,080 --> 00:01:23,720 And before long, Japanese TVs entered the US market and began to steamroll the American 16 00:01:23,720 --> 00:01:29,080 brands. In the US, the TV industry was viewed as mature, and the attitude among the folks in charge 17 00:01:29,080 --> 00:01:32,320 was, hey, what we have is good enough for everybody. 18 00:01:32,320 --> 00:01:35,560 So let's just focus on marketing and cost efficiency. 19 00:01:35,560 --> 00:01:42,640 Cha-ching. But obviously, we're no longer watching massive tube TVs in wooden cabinets. 20 00:01:42,640 --> 00:01:47,980 Japanese brands believed a better strategy was to continue innovating, imagine that. 21 00:01:47,980 --> 00:01:52,080 And sure enough, they introduced models that were higher quality and more lightweight thanks 22 00:01:52,080 --> 00:01:55,200 to their use of transistors instead of vacuum tubes. 23 00:01:55,200 --> 00:02:01,800 In fact, between 1970 and 1976, Japanese brands like Sony and Panasonic tripled their market 24 00:02:01,800 --> 00:02:05,400 share in the US, capturing nearly one half of it. 25 00:02:05,400 --> 00:02:09,680 Zenith's response, however, wasn't to pour more money into development to make their 26 00:02:09,680 --> 00:02:16,200 own products better, but instead to take the Japanese companies to court for supposed antitrust 27 00:02:16,200 --> 00:02:25,680 violations. That's one way to do it. Now this cost a lot of money, and the litigation dragged on for over a decade, but Zenith ultimately 28 00:02:25,680 --> 00:02:33,960 lost anyways. Making matters even worse, the US companies failed to see the potential of emerging TV-related 29 00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:41,600 technologies. For example, Sony started working on a low-cost VCR back in 1956, way before they even knew 30 00:02:41,600 --> 00:02:47,620 there would be a demand for it. American electronic companies at the time typically took a much more conservative approach 31 00:02:47,700 --> 00:02:51,540 by trying to ensure through consumer studies that there would be a market for something 32 00:02:51,540 --> 00:02:57,220 before they produced it, which ended up biting them as foreign manufacturers were effectively 33 00:02:57,220 --> 00:03:02,980 creating new markets, and VCRs became much more widespread than the disk-based technology 34 00:03:02,980 --> 00:03:08,820 the American companies were working on. Now this put even more financial pressure on American companies who didn't have as 35 00:03:08,820 --> 00:03:14,560 many product segments to compete in, and the Domino's, they began falling, baby. 36 00:03:14,640 --> 00:03:20,000 Zenith was bought by Korea-based LG in 1995, and no longer makes TVs. 37 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:25,160 RCA only exists as a brand name now owned by a company based here in Canada. 38 00:03:25,160 --> 00:03:29,400 And Magnavox is now also a minor brand owned by a Japanese company. 39 00:03:29,400 --> 00:03:33,200 It was taken over by a couple of entrepreneurs from Tennessee, but then went bankrupt in 40 00:03:33,200 --> 00:03:38,940 2004 after China was admitted to the WTO a few years prior, and started exporting TVs 41 00:03:38,940 --> 00:03:45,780 en masse to the United States. So the moral of the story here is that many of these brands we used to see all the time 42 00:03:45,780 --> 00:03:50,960 disappeared in huge part because many of them were just standing still. 43 00:03:50,960 --> 00:03:55,360 Good times simply don't last if you don't do anything to innovate. 44 00:03:55,360 --> 00:04:01,560 In fact, we're thinking about moving TechWiki off of YouTube and just full time onto TikTok. 45 00:04:01,560 --> 00:04:05,120 Maybe that'll work. You just gotta keep moving. We're not doing that. 46 00:04:05,120 --> 00:04:09,760 That's not gonna happen. Alright, that's it for this video guys. Hey, thanks for watching. 47 00:04:09,760 --> 00:04:16,960 Why don't you check out some of our other videos because there's lots. And if you have an idea for what we can talk about next on TechWiki, leave a comment below. 48 00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:17,600 Also subscribe.