From New York magazine. I mean website. Whatever:
Obsolete TV Listings Resurrected by L.A. Times
Complete, weekly TV listings guides — the kind on paper! — used to be a regular component of newspapers’ weekend editions. But then cable boxes started to carry the exact same information, without the dead trees or printing costs, and papers like the New York and L.A. Times discontinued them, while magazines like TV Guide started floundering. Now, the L.A. Times, which stopped printing its “TV Times” back in April 2007, will start it up again, because … well, just because! (Or, as an L.A. Times VP puts it, because: “Our [elderly] readers tell us they want a weekly TV book that covers around-the-clock programming.”) Now Los Angeles–area residents can get exactly the same information they have on their televisions by purchasing the L.A. Times at a newsstand, or paying an extra $2.99 per month to have it delivered to their homes. Then they can read it and see it on their TV screens at exactly the same time. [Wrap via Awl]
Kit Eaton of Gizmodo on RCA’s The Two Thousand:
“Back in 1969 RCA made an attempt at a high-end TV that was a vision of the sets of the year 2000. The Two Thousand was even made in a limited run of 2,000 and cost $2,000. That’s around $12,000 in today’s money, but for that price you got a 23-inch Hi-Lite tube that had ‘such a vivid, detailed picture’ you could ‘even watch it in a brightly-lit room.’ There were even ‘computer-like memory circuits’ that stored your fave channels, and preserved settings for volume and picture control. That must’ve seemed like the future indeed in an era of dial-twiddle-tuning to find the right VHF channel. The full advert page makes fascinating reading.
“‘No motors, no noise and no moving parts to wear out,’ just computer-designed ‘electronic memories‘… fabulous, especially since I remember hunkering down before our old TV to swirl the dial. My Dad used to get me to change the channels, as a kind of intelligent remote control. Nowadays my cat brushes past the touch-controls on my flat-screen LCD TV and does that job for me.”
[Paleofuture via Boing Boing Gadgets]
RCA’s 1969 Two Thousand TV Was Computerized Vision of Future, for $2,000 - Gizmodo
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Beautiful photo by Lee Friedlander. Funny how, through the years, both television screens and Hollywood leading ladies have gotten more flat and angular. Bye-bye, rounded curves.
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