When Sony introduced the first practical home video recorder they were faced with a formidable task. How do you educate potential customers about this important new technology? It was similar to recording audio, but with a picture. The only way to get the message across was in the media. Sony, and later the other Betamakers, flooded the public with advertising. Television was a natural medium for this. After all it was going to record what you were watching on TV. That idea only really worked for a little while. Turned out the networks weren't all that keen on promoting the idea that you could time shift their programming, and worse yet, assassinate their precious commercials (i. e., how they make money). All this cutting-edge power and convenience came at a price, and eventually someone would have to pay up. The networks and movie studios took this intrusion into their happy world personally and even rounded up supporters and formed an anti-VCR consortium. Their goal? To go after Sony and stop all this meddling. You might have heard of the great "copyright lawsuit" that forced Sony to defend and define our right to record what we pleased. The studios eventually lost and the public gained the right to record. There was some TV advertising prior and during this troubled time (you can find these commercials on Youtube) but the bulk of the money was channeled into pamphlets, posters, handouts, magazine ads and newspapers. New publications were born and existing audio and TV magazines expanded their coverage to include video. On the local level signs were placed in the displays and windows of the electronic specialty shops (that were blissfully enjoying all this new revenue). Ads were flaunted in the papers. In the photo above are just some of the ways home video recording was conveyed to America. Top left is television, the elephant in the room. Top right a typical newspaper ad is represented. Across the bottom are some of the publications that capitalized on the home video craze. But there was one of these, shown on the extreme right, that specialized only in Beta. It was created to cater just to the people that knew Beta was better. A new word entered the vocabulary, the Betaphile. Formed from substituting the word Beta for audio in the already established music connoisseur, the audiophile. It was a new noun that meant someone who liked, swore by and specialized in just the Beta format. The Betaphile Recorder info-magazine survived almost to the end of Beta. Throughout my Website I have made available samplings of advertisements, articles and reviews concerning our format. Many come from these publications and will have links that will open special panels featuring various visual gems from the past. (Click on the photo for a humorous take on the last Betamax for sale.) ©Misterßetamax go to homepage |