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Old 12th Oct 2020, 11:20 pm   #1
Atlantic 52
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Default Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Hello, I recently found this finance brochure from Lloyds & Scottish Trust Ltd of 4 Vigo Street, London W1. It invites you to apply to raise finance of up to 75% of the cost of a new Colour TV that could include the cost of the aerial!
It's dated November 1967 so right at the start of the introduction of UK colour TV. Note that you had to pay off the loan within 30 months. Colour was a big investment back in 1967 but some just had to have it, I remember it being the big wonder back then and even seeing just the test card in colour in a dealers shop window amazing.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 12:13 am   #2
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Also interesting that you could get tax relief on the loan payments.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 12:25 am   #3
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Lots of adverts from the 60's seemed to offer easy terms, I'm guessing to coincide with the relaxing of consumer credit controls, though I'm no expert
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 12:58 am   #4
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

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Originally Posted by emeritus View Post
Also interesting that you could get tax relief on the loan payments.
Wasn't that tax relief on the interest part of the loan repayments? Similar to mortgage interest tax relief?
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 2:06 am   #5
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Quote:
Originally Posted by emeritus View Post
Also interesting that you could get tax relief on the loan payments.
AFAIK, tax relief was only available on the interest, not on the whole of the repayments.
So if the cash price was £200, but the total repayable was £275, then tax relief was only available on £75.
Can anyone confirm ?
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 8:02 am   #6
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

I wonder what the APR was?
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 8:23 am   #7
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Around that time, colour TVs were seen as unreliable and likely to need expensive repairs, so a lot of people chose to rent and thereby make expenditure predictable. It wasn't just the sticker price in the showrooms that was an obstacle to colour TV ownership.

The hire purchase route softened the blow of the cost of the things, but still left the buyer open to unpredictable repair costs.

There was also a significant market at the time in monochrome TV rental ready to take on colour TV.

Outright TV ownership is today's norm, but it came about from two changes: Firstly the cost of sets fell below being exceptional purchases (number three, behind house and car) as people's disposable income grew, and secondly the reliability of the sets, certainly the perception of the reliability of sets jumped when Japanese sets arrived in the UK and eventually restrictions on quantities and screen sizes abated.

Cars had started getting larger and more powerful, holidays were starting to switch to countries with a higher probability of fine weather. There was a lot of change going on, but I think the reliability and feared repair cost issue kept the colour TV longer in the rental era than many other things.

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Old 13th Oct 2020, 9:11 am   #8
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Another factor was that normal programmes were still B&W, even if you had a colour set.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 9:33 am   #9
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Quote:
Originally Posted by broadgage View Post
AFAIK, tax relief was only available on the interest, not on the whole of the repayments.
So if the cash price was £200, but the total repayable was £275, then tax relief was only available on £75.
Can anyone confirm ?
That’s correct, it’s stated in the brochure in post #1

There were not that many dual standard CTV’s available in 1967, low production numbers and as stated mainly BW programs to watch. We sold a few mainly cash deals, didn’t do rental. The boom started for our shop in Nov 69 when all three channels were colour.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 9:39 am   #10
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

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Originally Posted by Brigham View Post
Another factor was that normal programmes were still B&W, even if you had a colour set.
And colour was only broadcast on UHF. Well into the 1970s there were significant swathes of the UK where there was no UHF signal strong-enough to deliver a watchable colour picture.

Ex-rental "Dual-standard" TVs (monochrome) were still a popular thing in mid-Wales and the borders in the late-70s - the '625' position on the selector remaining unused. In such areas a dealer might have difficulties selling colour-tellies, even with a good finance-package on offer.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 9:44 am   #11
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Another hindrance was creaky legislation meant if you rented you had to pay a year upfront, this was abolished circa 1971 and reduced to 3 months and later to a month ..suddenly became affordable for many.

TV chief Lord Lew Grade wanted colour tv asap on 405 line NTSC which would have meant much cheaper TVs minus expensive delay line.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 11:40 am   #12
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

And a far quicker 'take-up' rate.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 1:19 pm   #13
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

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Colour was a big investment back in 1967 but some just had to have it
My parents had two goes to learn the lesson!

The first TV was bought for the Coronation. It was a 12" set and I think only the second TV in the street. My father was an ordinary hands-on working chap who worked shifts so this would have been a pretty big investment. (I have papers going back to the day dot from when I cleared the house so there will be paperwork to tell me what the deal was – this has proved a useful and interesting archive.) Of course it was BBC only and it soldiered on, latterly prone to picture roll, to the point that as a small child I had learned where to find and adjust the controls on the back of the set.

By 1964 this set was giving up the ghost (pun intended) and with BBC2 about to launch a latest-and-greatest dual standard set was acquired. This never worked properly on UHF. The image was grey and grey and the rotary tuning difficult and abysmal so it was only ever used on VHF but at least I was at last able to see Fireball XL5 and Stingray that all the kids had been going on about at school. (I also remember seeing the first episode of Crossroads which was a vital part of my cultural education.)

With occasional trips to the repair shop this set must have lasted until the end of the 70s, though around this time a portable had turned up as a retirement present to Dad so anything on BBC2 was watched on that in the bedroom. When colour finally arrived in the household it was strictly a rental arrangement. “If it doesn't work or goes wrong they can sort it!”

The portable needed occasional attention but by then I was friendly with a couple of TV repair men.

My parents finally bought a colour set in the early 1990s. It was a Sanyo and saw them both out. I don't recall it ever needing any attention. I did broach the subject of digital as, now stuck at home, I thought he might like The History Channel, etc., but father was adamant: “There's five channels on this and that's enough.”

I remember the first colour TVs I saw in a household. One was in the home of a local radio ham about 1969 who I think was in the trade. The reasonably-heeled family of a school friend also had one and I had settled down to watch with the family when one of my favourite programmes came on. The lady of the house, who looking back was a bit of a Hyacinth Bucket, got up and promptly changed the channel: "Oh, we don't watch anything in black and white..." !
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 3:48 pm   #14
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

The takeup of colour TV in people's homes progressed quite slowly, partly because the sets were very expensive but also because they were perceived (correctly) as being unreliable and needing lots of maintenance. I only knew one person who owned a colour TV in the late 60s, a great aunt who considered herself very posh. The set seemed an enormous thing. CTV only really arrived in the early 70s after the restrictions on TV rental were eased, and most people continued to rent until TVs became much more reliable and costs dropped in the 80s. I was still using a mid 60s dual standard mono TV as my main telly until about 1982.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 4:06 pm   #15
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

The majority of folks certainly rented back in 1967, possibly because of the fear of repair costs.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 4:32 pm   #16
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

We rented a colour TV from about 1970 until maybe 1980ish when i joined Rumbelows and bought one on staff discount ,but even then it was an ex rental one.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 5:05 pm   #17
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Restrictions were relaxed as the post war economy allowed, as the massive debts were being repaid. We've got used to a consumer led society more recently, too much so to some eyes, but back then disposable income was in much shorter supply. My Parents never rented, but they did have maintenance contracts. I can only remember them having two TVs when I was at home. An Ekco 405 only console and a Philips 13 channel.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 5:13 pm   #18
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

We married in 1981, I decided to rent a colour TV as electronic devices were rapidly moving then and we could update to a better model after 12 months, coupled with the fact that both my wife and I, both our parents rented, but we couldn’t rent as we hadn’t enough credit reference to enable us to rent, my father in law acted as guarantor for the first 12 months when then I changed the agreement into my name,
Our first TV....with teletext as well......
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 5:30 pm   #19
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

My students' union at Cardiff got a large screen colour TV for the TV room as soon as colour was available in South Wales in the late 1960's. It only lasted a couple of months: one Saturday afternoon two men in white coats boldly walked in, told the watching students that it needed to go away for adjustment, unplugged it and walked out with it, never to be seen again.
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Old 13th Oct 2020, 5:41 pm   #20
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Default Re: Raising finance to buy a colour TV in 1967

Presumably its replacement was fitted with a heavy steel lockdown frame, our union and halls TVs were. I wondered whether the convergence had to be set up again on installation to compensate.
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