![]() ![]() The other major publisher of service data was Sams Photofacts. Many of these old volumes are available on the Internet. ![]() Rider would grab data from all the consumer electronics they could find and they would publish all of it in huge volumes, sometimes a total of 2,000 pages a year. Amazingly, many TVs and other consumer electronics at one time had schematics inside the cabinet for the service person. Many shops would send out a junior guy to check out simple things, and then bring everything else “back to the shop” where someone who knew what to do would troubleshoot at the component level. In the tube days, you could pretty easily swap tubes to fix the bulk of actual problems. Antenna wires destroyed by critters was common enough. A surprising number of calls would be something simple like a frayed line cord or a dirty tuner. Add even one simple part or another hour and I’m getting close to the big league TVs.ĭid you ever wonder how TV repair technicians knew what to do? Well, for one thing, most of the time you didn’t have to. ![]() So for an hour’s service call with no parts, I could just buy that 40″ TV. So with a ratio of about 3.5 to 1, a $30/hour service call would be, today, $105. That doesn’t sound too bad until you realize that today that would be about $1,400. Looking back, a Sears ad showed a great deal on a 19″ color TV in 1980. But for $98? Even a giant high-quality TV these days might cost a bit more than $1,000 and you can get something pretty great for well under $500. Granted, that’s not huge by today’s standards and I’m sure it isn’t a perfect picture. Besides that, TVs are full of custom parts you can’t get and jam-packed into smaller and smaller cases.Ĭase in point, I saw a “black Friday” ad for a 40-inch 1080p flatscreen with a streaming controller for $98. What’s worse is today’s TV is not only cheaper than last year’s model, but probably also better. The price of labor is up and the price of things like TVs drops every day. These days there aren’t many repair shops and it isn’t any wonder. ![]() And if you had enough business savvy to do sales too, you could do well. You might not get rich, but you could make a good living. There was a time when, if you were handy with a soldering iron, you could pretty easily open up a radio or TV repair business. ![]()
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