Thursday, May 08, 2008

Stereo Stereo TV 1975

In December, 1975, I designed the advertisement and direct-mail letter. At that time, Panasonic "was slightly ahead of its time." I used "ditto" technology to produce the documents shown here. The picture was inspired by Sony. "DP-3" was alluding to 3D & Digital projection. The following did not exist for TVs & consumers in 1977: Stereo sound, digital or automatic fine tuning, Digital transmission, 3-D, video & audio inputs & outputs, and projection.

The following technology did not exist: Personal or home computers, desktop publishing, the Internet, and digital TV. Today we have all of the above, including HDTV in 5.1 surround sound home theater! There are "3-D" TVs that use the traditional double picture out of phase, that gives the illusion of 3-D when you wear special eye-wear. This is similar to an I-Max presentation.

The address mentioned for my "Circuit City" type store was a vacant lot. Today, there is an office building for "David Lerner & Associates!" At the time, Lafayette Radio Electronics was headquartered in Syosset, where my mother worked there. In 1991, Circuit City entered the New York City market by acquiring the remnants of the failed Lafayette Radio chain. Lafayette-Circuit City fell due to competition from other New York area electronic retailers such as Newmark and Lewis, Trader Horn, The Wiz, Crazy Eddie and PC Richard. Today, on Lafayette Street in Syosset, is a Home Depot. I was offered a job by Lafayette in Syosset, and employed at the future nearby Circuit City in Hicksville 10/98 - 6/00. I also worked at The Wiz.

In 2003, Circuit City converted to a single hourly pay structure in all stores, eliminating commissioned sales. Many previously commissioned sales associates were offered new positions as hourly "product specialists", while 3900 salespeople were laid off, saving the company about $130 million a year.[5] Associates in both the domestic and international segment receive frequent training through interactive E-learning courses hosted on the company intranet known as ccity.com. In the beginning, the E-learning courses were developed in conjunction with Circuit City's training department and DigitalThink. As of 2007, all coursework is developed internally and the deployed and hosted on an LMS system by Convergys, my employer since 11/05. In a press release on March 28, 2007, Circuit City announced that it had laid off approximately 3400 of their associates who were paid above the salary range for their position in order to cut costs. In April 2008, video rental firm Blockbuster launched a takeover bid worth over $1 billion.[3]

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