Right Times, Wrong Tracks (Part 3)

You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and first impressions are usually the lasting ones, as they often say.
Indiana Senator James Danforth (Dan) Quayle, President George H.W. Bush’s choice for Vice President, didn’t make a very good first impression when he was introduced at the 1988 Republican National Convention. He acted so giddy and goofy he was never able to shed the Mr. “Potatoe” Head image.

Likewise, Tom Eagleton, selected as Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's running mate in 1972, made a rather clumsy debut on the national stage when it was revealed that the Senator from Missouri had been hospitalized for nervous exhaustion and received electric shock therapy. McGovern,"1000% behind Eagleton," withdrew the selection shortly thereafter.

In sports, the NBC’s introduction of the XFL Football league became one of TV's biggest fiascos when it received some of the lowest ratings ever for a sporting event broadcast during prime time on network television. The very next week, its 1.6 rating became the lowest ever registered in prime time by any program —sporting, news or entertainment. NBC thankfully pulled the plug on the XFL before the network became X-NBC.

Tammy Faye Bakker, wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, burst onto the public scene and was roundly ridiculed for her heavy makeup and opulent lifestyle, which included an air-conditioned doghouse for her poodle.

In July 1938, Douglas Corrigan’s highly publicized transcontinental return flight from NY to Long Beach, California, went slightly off course. “Wrong Way Corrigan,” as he later came to be called, flew east rather than west and landed in Dublin, Ireland, instead!

But the all-time worst introduction, by far, has to be the tragic, ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic, which literally never got a second chance. After a splendid send-off, four days into its maiden voyage, the “unsinkable” Titanic hit an iceberg and did what it wasn't supposed to do—sink! Prior to 1912, the word “titanic” meant having great magnitude, force, or power, but today the name usually suggests a disaster.

And like the Titanic, the MCA DiscoVision video laserdisc had a splendid send-off, but a few days—perhaps a few hours—after its introduction, it didn’t actually sink but, more aptly, crashed and burned (see part 2).

After many years of research and promise, four years behind schedule, its manufacturers fearful of being totally eclipsed by the VCR juggernaut, the laserdisc system was finally released for sale on December 15, 1978, in three Atlanta, Georgia, stores after a careful study of the demographics of consumers in that city.

Rich’s Department Store, along with Allen & Bean Home Entertainment Centers and McDonald's Home Entertainment Center in Atlanta, were the first retailers lucky enough to offer the prized optical video laserdisc player for sale in the US… or so they thought!

Video enthusiasts flew into Atlanta, not only from across the US but also from overseas, in an attempt to purchase the highly touted laserdisc Magnavox Magnavision 8000, despite its hefty retail price of $749 each.

According to my calculations, $749 in 1978 would translate to an equivalent price of $3,299 today.

Despite the high price, there was plenty of excitement leading up to the sale at Rich’s that by 5:30 A.M., about 70 people were lined up for the 10:00 A.M. opening. Eventually, to maintain order, customers had to be given numbers while they waited in line for the store to open.

According to one witness, when Rich’s doors opened at 10:00 A.M., in a stampede-like atmosphere “consumers just grabbed everything; I thought I was going to be trampled,” he declared.

Within ten minutes, all the laserdisc players were gone! One customer bought 15 discs at $20.00 each and said he didn’t even know what he was buying.

Scalpers offered up to $3,000 for the $749 laserdisc player—there were no sellers. They upped it to $5,000; still no one parted with their prized units.

But whatever the excitement at its introduction, within days, DiscoVision’s maiden “voyage” had come to be about as disastrous as the Titanic’s.

Consumers reported that as many as 20% of the discs they purchased were defective. Many discs had been manufactured so poorly that the adhesive used to sandwich together the two sides separated. Others reported rejection rates of up to 40%, as the discs would spontaneously go into repeat or skip-ahead mode.

DiscoVision, being an analog format (not digital), according to some buyers exhibited “ridiculous noise and dropouts, rendering the content all but unwatchable.”

Distributors handling DiscoVision said they were lucky to have 20 different movie titles at a time, and had difficulty soothing irate consumers who had bought the players hoping that MCA would honor the promise of many new releases every month. But based on the poor quality of the discs, this may have been a blessing.

One storeowner suggested that a class action suit should have been brought against MCA and Magnavox (Philips) for a product that was clearly not ready for public consumption.

Complicating matters, the discs were 12” in diameter, heavy, cumbersome and susceptible to damage. Each side of a given disc was limited to a maximum of 60 minutes of material and would abruptly stop, requiring the user to flip over the disc in order to continue watching the show. Some movies required two discs (three to four sides).

The Magnavox Magnavision VH-8000 player also exhibited horrendous quality problems, right from the start. Sooner or later, virtually every one of the first players wound up with some kind of defect, either with the power supply or in the complex optical laser-servo assembly. Symptoms included overheated motors seizing up, and units refusing to go into play mode, thereby creating a hideously distorted on-screen image that could even damage the videodisc itself.

Suffering from an identity crisis, DiscoVision also confused the “bejesus” out of everyone with all its names:
The MCA DiscoVision (Philips) Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 Videodisc (Laserdisc) Player
Whew!

A lot of finger-pointing ensued between MCA and Philips as both blamed the other for all the failures.

Just as the maiden voyage of the Titanic was “perfect” (except for one thing), the release of DiscoVision was “perfect,” except for two things: defective discs and defective players!

Other than that, DiscoVision worked great!

(To be continued)