Well, it finally happened. RCA is tooling-up for the media revolution.

In early June, the announcement was made by the company’s consumer electronics division in Indianapolis: By 1975, RCA will phase-out its entire line of home audio products. From that time on the company will concentrate on manufacturing and marketing only televisions and “television-related” products.

The Japanese have created a fiercely competitive market for audio products. Their sense of style, function, and price have made it increasingly difficult for U.S. manufacturers to compete. Not only because Japanese manufacturers can undersell their U.S. competitors, but also because the Japanese have a better understanding of media hardware and how to apply current technology to consumer items.

RCA’s move out of audio products can be related to the Japanese invasion. More interesting is the fact that theif current solution to the declining audio market is also a result of Japanese technology.

RCA held all the crucial patents for color/tv set manufacturing for over twenty years. Until a couple of years ago, no matter what tv set you bought,

it had RCA patented and licensed parts inside.

Sony changed that with the introduction of the Trinitron color tv system. Using a more sophisticated, but less complicated system of color tv display, Sony’s Trinitron became a hot item: the colors and over-all picture were brighter, the screen was flatter', there were fewer repair adjustments to get the set back in working order if anything went wrong, and the size of the color tube itself wasreduced to make it less cumbersome.

Other Japanese manufacturers followed Sony’s lead, each coming up with variations on the RCA system that produced a more viewable picture.

RCA’s control and domination of the home tv market began to slip. Their stockholders must have breathed a sigh of relief when the company announced several important modifications that would make their color system more competitive with the Japanese.

As icing on the cake, the Japanese introduced home video tape systems that worked. It is interesting to note that until very recently there wasn’t one U.S. manufacturer capable of matching Japanese know-how in the inexpensive video hardware field.

Now RCA is taking the big plunge. Not only are they concentrating on selling their all solid state, in-line color gun, black matrix tv sets, but they’ve also begun to test-market their home video system in the Indianapolis area.

That’s the “television-related” prod-

uct they mentioned in their news release.

Known as the RCA MagTape SelectaVision video tape system, the units resemble the Sony U-Matic video cassette machines, although they are not compatible.

The Japanese are to be congratulated for their foresight and talent at making media breakthroughs. But they still don’t have the full confidence of the American consumer market; the vast majority of that market is still suspicious of anything that’s not carrying the RCA, GE, or Sylvania trade-mark.

That’s why RCA’s commitment to television and video is so important.

To achieve total access and communication of information, the media revolution in this country must become the video revolution. Once everyone has their own video machine, the nature of television will change. Not drastically at first, but sufficiently to make a difference. Only the corporate energy and power of an operation like RCA can make this possible.

I’ve had video equipment for four years now, even gone so far as to write a book about the subject {The Video Primer, Links Books), and I believe in the use of video cassettes and, eventually, video discs as revolutionary hardware. It’s similar to what records did in the 1960’s. The media hardware of the long playing and single record and record playing equipment allowed us to use the equipment to our own ends. The same goes for advances in electronic typesetting and photo offset which made periodicals like this one possible. We have proved ourselves totally capable of manipulating media devices to our own end once they become generally available.

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The ultimate media manipulation of our time will be the video cassette/disc. But only when everyone has a video player to hook up to their tv set.

News and cultural events that don’t interest the networks will be available via this alternative format — in the same way rock music came to us by way of the FM broadcast band when AM couldn’t handle the new format or content. You might even get Creem on a video cassette instead of newsprint.

Of course there will be a video war before the question of video systems is settled. The Japanese will finally realize that they could be selling their present video hardware to consumers if RCA does the job right. Then there will be fights over standards, similar to the endless bickering that’s going on with the ill-fated concept of quadraphonic : sound. But within five years'we should see one or two systems take hold and become the standard — in much the way open-reel, cartridge, and cassettes have adjusted to each other in the audio market. Then the introduction of a couple of disc systems will cloud the consumer’s intelligence and once that’s settled we’ll be off and running.

One interesting point: it has been estimated that all the films and other recorded information fit for use on video cassettes and now in existence will be used up almost immediately when cassettes become a home item. I’m happy to hear this since it will be up to us to create the new media software for video hardware. We didn’t do such a bad job last time (with records), so it’ll be interesting to see what we can pull off once RCA paves the way.