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Do you know where your local TV repair shop is located? Well, chances are you don’t because in all likelihood there isn’t one.
Back in the stone age of electronics (i.e. when yours truly was a youngster) you could find at least one radio & TV repair shop in virtually every city and town in America – and they usually had plenty of business.
During my junior and senior years of high school I spent the latter half of every school day at our county’s vocational school learning the trade of radio & TV repair, and during my senior year I worked part time as a TV repair tech at one of our local shops.
Those were fun times. Everything from car radios to record players and tape recorders to TV sets of all (then current) sizes came into our shop. Every day was an adventure. There was just something special about the feeling I got every time I successfully tracked down and fixed a problem with a customer’s device.
After high school I sort of shifted gears and went into the computer field, but for several years I kept popping the case on some electronic gadget to fix whatever issue was ailing it every time the opportunity presented itself.
Back then many TVs still used vacuum tubes and there was something magical about looking at the innards of a TV and seeing the warm glow of those tubes.
But over time something happened that was simultaneously wonderful (for consumers) and terrible (for technicians): electronic items of all types became relatively inexpensive commodities, including TVs.
For several reasons, market factors began to shift. Before long it stopped making economic sense to fix a broken electronic gadget. Before we knew it TV sets were both larger and cheaper than they had been in years past. And it was the same with radios and other gadgets as well.
One by one America’s radio & TV repair shops closed up shop due to lack of business. And as they say, the rest is history.
To the average person this is probably no big deal. Time and technology march on, as they say. But for those of us who enjoyed troubleshooting and repairing all things electronic, it’s a bit sad to say the least.
To finish up, here’s a nostalgic short video that sheds a bit more light on the heyday and eventual demise of the corner TV repair shop. If you’ve been around for a few years I believe you might enjoy it.