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Strange ReTales: Selling Video In The Stone Age

Not the best-merchandised TV wall I’ve ever seen.

When I browse the video department of modern retails I’m struck by how lucky kids today have it.

When I was their age, demonstrating video quality was much more difficult.

I’m going to take you way back in time, before DVD, before HDTV, to the 1990s.

Back then we had neither digital signal nor fancy video matrix switchers for the TVs in our showroom. To demonstrate the picture quality of our TVs NTSC 480i was as good as it got, and we were stuck with it.

So, the question was, what broadcast channels could we put on the TVs to make them look sensational?

Initially, the answer was music videos.

Which was great, at least until both Grunge and Nu Metal came along, with visuals that were as gritty and low-fi as the music.

Yeah, you can really see how vibrant this Sony Trinitron looks, Mr Customer! See how the muddy greens just POP?

Also, there was the issue of the occasional customer complaints about the music videos being “inappropriate.”

That actually led to one District Manager in a different region of the company I worked for to hand down this pronouncement to his store:

“Nothing but Weather Network. All day. Every day.”

That led me and my store to ask the question, what broadcast channels could we put on the TVs that will both make them look sensational, and help us maintain our sanity (what little we had, anyway)?

My solution?

FOOD NETWORK

At the time, for NTSC broadcast, Food Network Canada was pretty good. Crisp video, bright colors, and the content was reasonably engaging.

The only downside was it made us hungry.

C’mon Bobby, aren’t you tired of mango chutney? We are.

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