90 'FAST FORWARD' SIMON FRITH REVIEWS A HISTORY OF THE VCR Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/90/1620695 by guest on 28 September 2021

The first cassette recorder to be marketed with the launching of Sony's in 1975, in the USA was Cartridge Television Inc's was to be entirely dependent on Japanese Cartrivision, which went on sale in June 1972. It hardware. came complete with a catalogue of 111 black James Lardner is a staff writer for the New cassettes (for sale only) of programmes such as Yorker and his study of the video cassette Erica Wilson's Basic Crewel and Chekhov's The recorder has all the virtues and faults of a New Swan Song ('the first dramatic work made Yorker piece. It is well written and well expressly for cartridge television') and 200 red researched, entertaining and informative, but cassettes (for rental only) of Hollywood films like depends for its impact on a familiar narrative of Casablanca and Dr Strangelove. The movie box heroic capitalist endeavour (which Lardner had a locking device which made it impossible to uncomplicatedly celebrates) and behind-the- rewind. Only retailers had a rewinding machine, scenes skulduggery (which Lardner doggedly and this was equipped with a counter so that uncovers). It is so detailed that it is sometimes every resetting was noted - Hollywood studios difficult to decide what Lardner is telling the weren't about to change the principle that they story for. But the Cartrivision fiasco captures his 'lend' movie prints and take a cut of every main concerns - the Japanese takeover of the showing. American domestic electronics industry; In the event, Cartrivision was a bit of a flop. Hollywood's attempt to keep financial control of Customers were much more interested in the red the new medium; the way in which consumer than the black cassettes and soon found their preferences can have quite unexpected disadvantages. As James Lardner writes, 'if a consequences for the leisure industry. screaming infant summoned a viewer away from From a consumer's point of view the history of his Cartrivision set in a hurry and made him miss technology always has the same pattern. We read a few minutes of a movie, there was no way to of new devices that cost huge amounts of money recapture those minutes without a return trip to and seem to have no immediate purpose; we the store - and no way for the store to rewind the follow reports of the prices coming down and cassette without reporting a fresh transaction to domestic value going up; we see or hear the the Cartridge Rental Network.'' Further disaster struck in November 1972, when the company's tapes 'spontaneously began to decompose'. By mid-'73 Cartridge Television Inc was filing for James Lardner, Fast Fomard; Hollywood, the Japanese and bankruptcy and the video boom, which began the VCR Wars, New York and London, W\V Norton and Co, 1987. machines at work for richer or more foolish UK) flourished as a particular sort of small 91 friends; we find ourselves thinking, one day, 'if business - it didn't need much capital, there was only / could do that', and then the price or rental an obvious market gap, it could operate at a local costs suddenly seem right, we get the equipment level (and the more 'hick' the setting, the more for ourselves and soon can't live without it. I can need there was for a video store). It was partly remember my parents moving through these because video store owners and customers so arguments on the way to our first TV set; I've obviously stood for the American entrepreneurial gone through them for audio and video cassette ideal that they were in the end able to outlobby machines; I've almost reached the final step in the Hollywood studio interests - their lobbying Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/90/1620695 by guest on 28 September 2021 purchasing a CD player; I' three-quarters of the campaign may have been financed and run by the way to a telephone answering machine. Electronics Industry Association of Japan, but What I'm describing here is obviously the the Motion Picture Association could hardly play creation of'false' needs - a huge marketing the xenophobic card against mid-Western 'mom campaign lies behind my feeling that, yes, I and pop' stores. should really be listening to compact discs. But as Hollywood wanted to make copying of films Lardner makes clear, such successful illegal, but what was at stake was not moral manipulation of the market is a fraught process, a principle but money, and what the studios were struggle in which there are as many losers as really after was control of the rental business plus winners and in which the most astute operators some sort of royalty from the sale of VCR are those who most quickly respond to market machines and tapes (the campaign exactly choice. Lardner notes that one casualty of the paralleled record company campaigns on audio VCR wars was therefore Sony itself, which had to taping). The problem was that two kinds of pay a 'pioneer tax' for having started out with property right were in conflict: copyright Betamax - it was quickly apparent to Sony's holders' right to exploit their 'creativity', and rivals that the original Beta machines were VCR owners' right to do what they liked with limited in consumer appeal by their one-hour their machines. The subsequent legal battle, format; when RCA did a deal with the other Lardner's second interest, revealed the Japanese electronics firms to market VHS players contradiction to be at the heart of American it was on the promise that VHS tapes would last intellectual property law. The lower court's three or four hours - 'RCA wanted a machine robust populist decision for Sony was overturned that could record a football game.' And one by a higher court's supercilious finding for fascination of Lardner's book is his description of MCA/Universal - 'It is noteworthy,' Judge the dialectics of Japanese electronics research: the Kilkenny wrote, 'that the statute does not list technicians come up with a new device, the "convenience" or "entertainment" or "increased marketing departments seek to sell it in the US, access" as purposes within the general scope of learn what consumers make of it and return to the fair use.' But his ruling was, in turn, set aside by technicians with modifying instructions - a a split Supreme Court, which recommended the machine with longer playing time, a fast forward issue be considered by Congress. It was there that mechanism, etc. 'consumer' and 'small business' interests defeated the film industry. But none of the electronics companies did very systematic market research (it is not clear that It was a pyrrhic defeat. In the last few years the such research is valuable in this context, anyway spread of VCRs has given the studios a huge new - market data is useful in revealing what people income just from the sales of single film copies to do do, not what they might), and the most video stores, and the video market has given a significant use of the VCR turned out to be new lease of commercial life to old films and neither time-shifting nor 'librarying' (to 'library' opened up a demand for 'sell through' tapes - was to build up a collection of , home study like Jane Fonda's Workout and something in my experience done only by media 'kid vids'. It is calculated that there are, now, as and film studies lecturers), but film rental. many video outlets as cinemas in the USA, that Lardner focuses on two aspects of this. First, he the video return will soon match the theatre looks at the way video rental in the USA (as in the takings. The small rental concerns that were so 92 important ideologically for the electronics my wife,' he said. 'A VCR let us maximise the industry are now being pushed out by chains and value of those hours of the day that we decided to department stores. The only corporate victim of devote to watching television. I guess that after the video boom has been cable television - as in you get above thirty thousand dollars a year or so, Britain; video rental remains a much more you should operate on the assumption that time is popular way of home film viewing than cable your'most valuable commodity. If you have a rental, which has its own message about what sort certain hourly value to your employer, you of'property' films are seen to be. should have at least that hourly value to yourself The message of Lardner's book is that while in your off time, and if you choose to segment Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/90/1620695 by guest on 28 September 2021 the leisure corporations make huge profits from some of your off time into recreation, and if that their market, they remain baffled by it. People at recreation has a component of television play just don't act rationally. The funniest quote watching, it shouldn't just be catch as catch can. is from one of the pioneering video store And I saw that and I said, "Gee, if I value my operators, Frank Bamako Jr: 'I saw what a own time like that, I'll bet there are others like difference a VCR in my home made for me and me!"'

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

ROY ARMES is Reader in Film and Television at Middlesex Polytech- nic in London. His new book, On Video, is published in April by Rout- ledge ... SEAN CUBITT is National Organiser of the Society for Education in Film and Television. He is currently writing a book on video culture... SIMON FRITH is Director of the John Logie Baird Centre for Research at the University of Strathclyde... DOUGLAS GOMERY lives in Washington DC, where he writes about issues con- cerned with the economics of film and television... LESLIE HADDON is currently completing a PhD at Imperial College, London, on the roots and development of the home computer in Britain... PETER KRAMER is currently researching a PhD dissertation on Buster: Keaton at the University of East Anglia.. .JOHN ROBERTS is an art critic who lives in London... GINETTE VINCENDEAU lectures in Film Studies at the University of Warwick... PATRICIA R ZIMMERMANN is Associate Professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography, Ithaca College, New York. She is currently working on a study of the discursive and economic relations of amateur film-making in the US from 1897-1962. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article/29/2/90/1620695 by guest on 28 September 2021

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