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There are a number of reasons why the consumer Betamax eventually lost out to VHS. Experts and pundits alike can argue on the different points endlessly. Was it cassette size? Recording time? Licensing restrictions? Price? Did the adult movie rental industry kill Betamax? (As author Joshua Greenburg claimed in his book: Betamax to Blockbuster.) No discussion about the phenomenon would be complete without an examination of the what would eventually become known as "The Innovative Betamax" and its eventual demise.  In 1975 when Sony (PLATE 1) introduced the world to home video they had this new market all to themselves. There were a few stragglers with competing formats but they quickly fell by the wayside. Then RCA (or more correctly, Thompson Electronics) entered the picture. They wanted to put their name on this new recording medium and they wanted a longer recording time to go along with it. Enough time to record the average football game, about two hours. They approached Sony and asked if they could re-label their home video recorder and market it in the USA under the RCA brand. And could Sony make it a two hour unit instead of a one hour (the original Sony SL-7200 was capable of only one hour of recording on a K-60 cassette). Sony's chairman, Akio Morita (shown on the left in the above photo) said nothing doing. Now this was to become one of those pivotal events that go down in history. The ones that change everything going forward. Think for a second what is being decided here. This is television broadcasting on a tape. No more playing by the dictates of the networks. The public was going to gain control. They were going to eat this up and everyone in the picture business knew it. It was one of those times and a big deal for Sony. The official reason for the turn down was that with the current video head technology making a longer recording time was unobtainable (or more correctly just undesirable). The video heads would need to be twice as thin. Sony didn't want to degrade the picture. Video head technology was new and still developing in 1975. The right head size and storing the signal had been the major obstacle for some time. The electronic method was already understood. And the speed would need to be cut in half to extend the recording time to two hours. Making a bigger cassette was also not going to happen. (Sony had big plans for this compact little case.) Another reason for stonewalling RCA was they had their hands full meeting the current demand for the new Betamax. They were flying off the shelves like free beer. Production simply couldn't meet the publics appetite for the new home video recorder. Especially difficult was supplying the demand for video cassettes. Sony was working 24/7 trying to supply both. This is why RCA (primarily a marketing company) wanted to get in on this video revolution. They knew what was about to happen, the world was going to go nuts over this new and powerful freedom handed to them. So… after being politely turned down by Sony what were they going to do? They went searching. It seems there was another format in Japan that could record two hours on a slightly larger (almost twice as big) cassette. Sony had experimented with this system but eventually discarded it because it was not user friendly. It was awkward, tough on tape and the cassette was bulky and flimsy. But since it had been thrown away by Sony it was fair game. A tiny appliance manufacturer called Matsushita decided to accommodate RCA and obtained the manufacturing rights. This turned out to be a marriage made in heaven, and another one of those other moments that go down in history. Now the public was going to have two formats to choose from that were not alike or compatible. Let the confusion begin, RCA was in the game now and they knew how to market, not make, but market. Never mind that this other format (VHS) was big, bulky, ugly, cumbersome and inferior in almost every way to Beta, it had the one thing that RCA saw as its greatest asset. And that was more recording time. RCA was good at promoting this and they had three guys (shown on the right in the picture above) that had already sold the public on their color tube televisions a while back. They felt that presented properly, with lots of advertising, this other, longer recording format could dig its way in and find sufficient following in the home video market to compete with the dominant Betamax. Let me remind you that monetary reward (the bottom line) is what drives almost all companies. Never mind that VHS was inferior in every way. That simply didn't matter. Getting a market share and selling product was the driving force here. Could they sell this thing to the public? Would they buy this almost useless and overly troublesome video recorder? Well, the answer soon would become a great big yes. The public saw the longer running time as a cost saving factor (as promoted by VHS) and voted with their wallets. To kind of see where they were coming from here sales-wise I would like to point out that RCA would a few years later go on to bring to market a ©Misterßetamax go to homepage |