Videos

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Videos

By late 1987, over one-half of American households owned a videocassette recorder (VCR). With unprecedented speed, the small device had entered the home and taken up its place alongside the television as the premiere electronic consumer item. As with many other consumer products, videocassette recording technology had a long development period, and one that dovetailed with the development of other forms of media. Necessary innovations came in the first half of the twentieth century. Dr. Fritz Pfleumer received a 1928 German patent for the deposition of magnetic powders on paper or plastic backing media. The German companies, Allegemeine Elektrizitats Gelleschaft (AEG) and BASF, produced quantities of magnetic tape between 1934 and 1944 exclusively for the German radio broadcasting stations. In 1944, the American 3M corporation began its own experiments with magnetic coatings, but it was not until after World War II that John T. Mullin, a United States electronic specialist, went to Germany and returned home with four "Magnetophon" recorders. These audiotape recorders were scrutinized, re-wired with parts from the United States, and finally demonstrated to the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1946. Mullin joined the Ampex Electric Corporation in 1948, which later that year introduced the first successful American audiotape recorder. Although other American companies, including RCA, experimented with videotape recording during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Ampex, due largely to its advanced research in audiotape recording, was able to develop the first feasible professional videotape recorder—the VR-1000, which premiered in 1956, weighing 900 pounds and sporting a price tag of $75,000 a unit.

The vast majority of these recorders were purchased by stations and studios affiliated with one of the three major television broadcasting companies—ABC, NBC, and CBS—who employed them in the retransmission, delay, and temporary archiving of programming. Technological innovations during the 1950s largely served the ends of professional engineers and included enhancements in mobility, advanced editing capability, and the addition of color recording. CBS was the first to broadcast from videotape, presenting Douglas Edwards and News in 1956 using Ampex recorders. Quickly, the technique diminished the need for "live" broadcasting. Stations could now provide uniform "clock-times" for shows coast-to-coast, functionally eliminating differences introduced by time zones and the erratic adoption of Daylight Savings Time in some regions. Videotape recording also freed performers from the anxiety of "live" performances. Errors could be corrected and re-taped as in film production, and the possibility of the "re-run" was created. Recording technology allowed the networks to concentrate on technical quality and the consolidation of viewing markets. Little attention was yet paid to the development of a viable consumer videotape recorder, although videotape's impact on television viewing was already being felt.

The 1960s marked the beginning of "consumer" videotape recording. The high cost of the Ampex VR-1000 provoked Japanese manufacturing into developing a domestic alternative. Research had begun at Sony as early as 1953, but no significant gains were made until the Japanese company Toshiba developed a helical-scanning recording head in 1959. Helical-scanning technology, the basis of today's VCR, wound its tape around a spinning, drum-like recording head, a novel method which avoided restrictions imposed by Ampex's numerous patents. In 1961, the Victor Company of Japan (JVC) introduced an improved dual, helical-scan head. These innovations allowed for an increased recording quality with a slower tape transport, resulting in decreased tape use and cost savings. Yet, these early units were inferior in image quality and unacceptable for broadcast use.

In 1959, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) adopted standards for the manufacture of videotape recorders, thus potentially allowing any manufacturer to enter the marketplace. The early 1960s also saw the use of transistorized electronic components, resulting in more compact recorders and potential portability. Nevertheless, the 1963 Nieman Marcus Christmas catalog offered the gigantic $30,000 Ampex VR-1500 videotape recorder / "entertainment center." In 1965, Sony introduced the helical-scan, black-and-white, reel-to-reel, CV-2000 which used an extremely compact 1/2" tape (as compared to the 2" tape of the older Ampex VR-1000). Briefly offered as a consumer model, marketers later emphasized its sale to broadcast and industrial markets. By 1967, Ampex claimed to have sold 500 recorders for "home-use," and by 1968, a number of consumer machines were available in the $800 to $4,000 price range. Most of these, however, such as Cartrivision, failed to capture a significant home market due to either high price or technical shortcomings.

Significant inroads were finally made in the 1970s when Sony introduced the 3/4" tape U-Matic VCR to the American market in 1972. The development of the video-cassette served as a significant leap beyond older reel-to-reel tape formats and completely removed the need for a skilled engineer/operator. Although consumers still resisted the notion of a home videocassette recorder, broadcast engineers began to utilize the Sony U-Matic for news reportage, an area still dominated by film recording. The 1968 Mexico City Olympics games had been covered by at least one older-generation Ampex videotape recorder, and in 1974, a U-Matic was used to document Nixon's historic trip to Moscow. Sony followed in 1975 with the 1/2" Betamax recorder/television combination ($2,300) and the 1976 Betamax stand-alone model ($1,300), each capable of recording one hour of programming. Whereas the U-Matic tape had been the size of a large hardcover book, the Betamax cassette was now that of a paperpack. Coupled with improvements in tape media and recording method (Beta being a term in Japanese for a calligraphic stroke so rich that completely covers the material below; in this case, where the video signal completely saturates the tape), Betamax was strongly posed to enter a market already cluttered with competitors. The result was revolutionary.

Betamax launched its United States marketing program in fall of 1975. The pitch was simple: "any time is prime time." This was a "time-shift machine," one capable of recording a single program while you watched another, and could begin a pre-set recording even when the user was not at home. A total of 55,000 home VCRs were sold by the end of 1976, 160,000 by the end of 1977, and over 400,000 by the close of 1978. According to a trade magazine poll in January 1977, 40 percent of Americans knew what a Betamax was. Yet, according to a 1979 Nielsen poll, the total number of households in the United States owning VCRs was only 475,000, a mere one-half of one percent of the total homes owning televisions. Although other polls placed the number at closer to 800,000, the situation was not yet considered threatening by the majority of the commercial broadcast executives. Sales of prerecorded videocassettes hovered at approximately one tape for every two VCRs. Sales of blank videocassettes continued to climb sharply, prompting some in the industry to ask to what use these tapes were being put.

In 1977, RCA had introduced the Video Home System (VHS) VCR, capable of recording two hours of programming on its slightly larger tape cassette. This increase in allowable recording time was followed by a two-hour Betamax recorder in 1977. RCA responded with a four-hour VHS in 1977, and again in 1979 with a six-hour model. Stiff competition erupted between the two incompatible formats although sales of prerecorded material continued to stagnate. By the end of 1979, VHS had captured 55 percent of the VCR market, a share which would only increase over the next seven years when production of the Betamax recorder was discontinued. Although JVC and other manufacturers rushed to augment their models with features such as "stop-action" and "pause," it was not until Sony's introduction of the Betascan in 1979 that the VCR threatened to severely alter the viewing patterns of American households. By allowing the viewer of recorded broadcast material to "scan" across the tape while simultaneously viewing it, Betascan users could easily skip commercial advertisements. This feature was rapidly incorporated into JVC's VHS model released in 1979.

In 1984, a major Nielsen survey stated that 36 of the respondents used the "stop" or "pause" feature of their VCR to delete commercials from shows they where both watching and taping. Nearly half said that they "frequently" used the "fast-forward" capability to skip taped commercials. Debate raged over what this meant for the future of commercial viewing. Some analysts adopted an almost apocalyptic tone, saying that the VCR would mean the end of viable commercial broadcasting. Others adopted the more modest stance that while VCRs increased the difficulties of directing commercials at specific target audiences (children, female homemakers, etc.), they had potentially opened an entirely new group of viewers for their programming. While television viewing did decrease on Friday and Saturday evenings as viewers turned to other prerecorded materials or shows taped earlier in the week, the overall time spent viewing television increased from six hours and 10 minutes in 1977 to seven hours and seven minutes in 1986.

The sales of prerecorded materials got off to a slow start. Andre Blay founded the Video Club of America in 1977, offering a slim catalog of 50 films on video mostly licensed from Twentieth Century Fox; none of the titles were more recent than 1973, and all had been sold to television. Nevertheless, Blay's Club was the first serious offering of prerecorded feature films at a time when adult films comprised the vast majority of videocassettes publicly available. Warner Home Video began releasing prerecorded videotapes of Hollywood films in 1980. Starting with a very modest 25 titles, this number increased as consumer demand climbed. Warner Brothers, like other film producing companies, had originally expected that consumers would purchase these recordings outright. Yet, much to their chagrin, stores had sprouted up which offered to rent titles to viewers. These "middlemen" were perceived as a potential threat, much like television production companies had considered the VCR itself. Copyright was, for them, the right to completely dominate and control the marketing and distribution of their programming and films. MCA/Universal Studios and Walt Disney Production had attempted to sue Sony beginning in 1975, just after the release of the Betamax recorder in the United States. The case had wound its way though the Federal court system until the Supreme Court decided in January 1985 that "neither the consumers who tape television programs for their own use nor companies that make and sell video recorders violate Federal copyright law." In light of the "Betamax case," film companies opted for the creation of licensing agreements over expensive litigation which, in turn, paved the way for a widespread increase in available titles.

Tom Shales wrote in the Washington Post in 1985: "The Thing of the Year: the videocassette, which in the past twelve months has had a tremendous effect on American television viewing and American family life. We have gone from being a television nation to being a video nation.… By 1955, you felt naked if you didn't own a TV set. By 1965, you felt a tad underdressed if you haven't gone to color. In 1975, it began feeling a little nippy if you didn't have cable TV. And 1985 was the year you felt positively indecent unless you had a VCR." In the 1980s, video made itself felt in other ways. The cable station Music Television (MTV) was launched in August 1981 with the appropriately titled "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. It soon became a market force in the music industry and a serious creator of youth culture. Performers, once content with the studio/radio/tour mode of production and promotion, now had to consider visual elements often unrelated to the music itself. In 1983, Sony introduced the Betamovie camera, the first camcorder. Although Sony had introduced the bulky "Porta Pack" several years earlier, the Betamovie was the first truly portable video camera. Largely due to the public's penchant for creating documentary "home movies," camcorder sales increased throughout the 1980s, eventually displacing the traditional 8mm film camera in that role. Although never ubiquitous as the VCR, the video camera enjoyed a higher profile in the late 1980s and 1990s. Through television shows, such as America's Funniest Home Videos, and the increasing use of "amateur" footage in news broadcasts, the videotaped events became common viewing. Their importance would perhaps become most clear as the public witnessed the tapes of the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots of 1992.

—Vance Bell