The "Golden Age" of Stereo was due to ... no competition!

Nostalgia is a wonderful thing.  It is a way of looking at our past, and cherry picking the things we liked about it, and minimizing the bad things.  We do it all the time, and I truly think that it leads to a better life as long as we recognize it for the benign fantasy for what it is.

What does that have to do with stereo?  From about the late 1940's until the 1980's every home had a stereo system capable of playing LP's and sometimes a form of tape.  It was a central element in entertainment for a family, competing first with Radio, and then with TV in the 1960's.  It was one of the first things a new household would buy, and when friends came over, it was a central point of them enjoying each other's company.  TV did take a big chunk out of the stereo's use, but it still was a major choice until the VCR hit the scenes in the late 1970's and early 1980's. 

It truly was a "golden age" for the home stereo that many openly admit were saddened when motion picture based home theatre took over entertainment, relegating music a secondary role.  The vacuum left when the mass market companies left (Pioneer et al) and started pursuing low cost HT Receivers were filled by a plethora of small boutique companies that could survive easier on a shrinking customer base.  Because volumes were small, the prices rose, and the whole thing, while never cheap, became the domain of the well heeled.

While we don't dispute the conventional account of what happened, we think that the dominance of the stereo was due to the way entertainment was distributed before the VCR.  And unlike the conventional wisdom, the CD did NOT destroy fine audio (it sure didn't help it, though), it was the VCR that did it, by offering a truly compelling alternative to "your-choice on-demand" entertainment that previously existed only as a cabinet full of records.

You might ask why we would want to weigh in on something in the past, and pretty esoteric?  Pretty simple, this whole thing sprang from a discussion with our kids, explaining to them how music, TV and movies worked "back in the day."  It wasn't that they didn't believe us, they just had no basis for comparison or comprehension of it, given that today you swim in a sea of media available at your fingertips, whenever you want to watch it.  When you go to the cinema today, the smaller ones have half a dozen screens, and if you miss a movie, or it doesn't come to a place near you?  No problem.  Wait for the DVD, or BluRay, or Netflix, or or or ...

So the main points we were conveying to them, we think also explains why the Stereo, once the King of home entertainment,had such a long reign, and now can only hope to become a solid choice among solid choices:

One, maybe TWO screens.  Ah, those were the
days ....

Movies: Before the late 70's/early 80's and VCR's if a movie came to your local cinema, and you missed it ... you missed it. There was no way to see it unless the TV Networks picked it up (and hacked it apart to get past censors and fit in the time slot).  Also, most cinemas had 2 screens, with the "amazingly big ones" having 4-6 screens.  So only in the largest cities did people have the opportunity to see the full run of movies at any given time.

The center of many homes

Music:Before the mid 1980's pretty much everyone played records or had cassettes. 8-track if you were very unlucky. Radio was the "streaming" if its day, and was very popular. But also, Rock Concerts were relatively cheap, too, and there were bands on tour in the summer almost all the time - it was less an "event" and more of seeing the guys you heard on the radio when they came into town for $10-20 or so. Some department stores sold concert tickets, but also many record stores did, too.

TV Guide from 1965.  This told you
what was on when.  And if you missed
it?  Too bad ...

Books: Before the 1990's if you wanted a highly specialized book, you had to order it through the library. Most cities had a limited selection of books and bookstores unless you lived in a really big city (like New York). Book-of-the-Month club was a rational choice if you loved to read, and reading book reviews was rational as well since many times the biggest barrier to reading a good book was simply knowing it was out there.

TV: Network TV was up to 4 major channels over the air (ABC, NBC, CBS and a Public TV station) - but not all cities had all of them, only the largest cities did (Famously, the wife of LBJ had the local Austin TV Station, and that was the ONLY TV station operating there until the 1970's). Cable came along in the 1970's but was slow in deploying, and Satellite TV requires large dishes and a lot of tinkering to get the feeds - and was a little like HAM radio.  But until the VCR came along, the TV's schedule was possibly your only chance to see a particular episode or performance.  During the summer, sometimes networks would replay episodes, and these re-runs were your your last chance to see a particular episode.

Newspapers: Most cities had 2 to 3 papers, usually a morning paper and a evening one - and if you were "well informed" you got both - one in the morning and one in the evening. Each had independent editorial control and news gathering. The large media conglomerates we see today hadn't yet formed.  Partly regulations would have prevented it, but the profitability of the local papers would have made it very difficult as well.

So your best bet, really your only bet to on-demand anything without going to ridiculous extremes was a stereo system and a record collection.  Given that these days nearly everything is available in some on-demand format (streaming or media based), I think it is reasonable to assume that the Stereo will never again be King of the home entertainment heap.  But it is also safe to say, that no form of entertainment or means of distribution will be able to claim that title, or at least for very long.

We sure wouldn't give up what we have now to live our lives then, and we feel that the Stereo at home could and should have a greater role than it does today for whole-family entertainment, we think that the dominance of a stereo system "back in the day" was more due to a draught of alternatives, than anything else, and feel as things climb back it will be a collection of equals for entertainment than any one thing.