Stewart Wolpin

The CES WABAC Machine
December 27, 2007

Jack Wayman doesn't know me. Check that — when I see him, a grin of recognition registers on his face followed in a nano-second by a barely perceptible face freeze and eye shift toward my name badge that denotes the frantic firing of brain synapses in the usually vain search of a name to match the facial cognizance.

And that's … OK. The mere fact that Jack Wayman knows that he knows me is compliment enough. And, I also freeze far more frequently than I like when unable to match faces I recognize with names I should know. Memory is the second thing age robs you of …

In case you're new to the consumer electronics enterprise, Jack Wayman is the reason you're about to travel to Las Vegas next week — he founded International CES back in 1967. Sartorially resplendent with a mass of carefully coifed snow-white hair, at age 85, Jack's still regularly on the road to ebulliently promote our industry and products — although he steadfastly refuses to have email.

But Jack won't be in Vegas this year. Last week, he had a heart valve replacement and he only left the hospital the Friday before Christmas.

But if Jack won't be at CES this year, I'd like to spend the next 500 words or so traveling back to those thrilling days of yesteryear via, with apologies to Mr. Peabody and his adopted boy Sherman, the Wayman WABAC (Wayback) Machine.

Monday, June 26, 1967, was smack dab in the middle of the misnamed Summer of Love. Sure, The Beatles' majestical "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," released earlier in the month, was knocking teenage and adult longhairs for a loop. The night before, 400 million people watched the Fab Four on "Our World," the first live global satellite transmission, performing a song written especially for the telecast, "All You Need Is Love."

But that day, five American marines and a South Vietnamese militiaman were killed and 100 marines were wounded in North Vietnamese rocket, mortar and artillery barrages. Earlier in the month, Israel defeated a combined Arab army in the Six-Day War. Race riots erupted in Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati and Tampa that month, and would be followed by additional racial violence the following month in another dozen U.S. cities, Detroit and Newark the most notable. The previous week, conscientious objector Muhammad Ali was sentenced to five years in prison for refusing induction into the army. The devilish Rosemary's Baby had just entered the New York Times' Best Sellers list and the sadistic The Dirty Dozen was packing them in at the movies. Despite its sobriquet, love was not on many people's agenda that summer.

The day dawned clear and comfortable in midtown Manhattan. At the Americana and Hilton hotels, 15,000 electronics manufacturers, distributors and retailers checked out 100 booths — most not more than glorified tables — occupying 150,000 square feet exhibiting 10,000 products ranging "from $8 radios the size of a pack of cigarettes to $15,000 room-length stereophonic units," according to coverage of the show in The New York Times.

When Jack Wayman ushered in that first CES, the consumer electronics business was "only" an $8 billion dollar industry, around $40 billion in today's dollars. But the industry was under-going a downturn, with sales of radios declining sharply and manufacturers holding high inventories. Several of the industry's major players had had highly-publicized layoffs.

On display were a wide variety of TVs, transistor and tabletop radios, record players (both console and so-called "picnic players") and console furniture units that combined all these advanced A/V components. The latest tech rages were stereo audio tape player/recorders that used "cartridges" or "Play-Tape" — the then new compact cassette format — rather than reel-to-reel, and the growing number of devices that used solid-state components that included integrated circuitry rather than vacuum tubes. According to The Times, "there is a television set, radio, or tape recorder to suit any taste or price."

Television in 1967 was transitioning from black and white to color. Just before that first CES, several companies lowered their prices on color sets between 5 percent and 10 percent. The largest models with 23-inch screens ranged between $500 and $900 — around $2,500 to $4,500 in today's dollars. Earlier in the year, the portable wars began as several companies unveiled color TVs with handles, battery packs and telescoping antennas with screens ranging from 4 to 14 inches, ranging in price from $199 to $329 and weighing in at 40 pounds.

In total, color TV sales were expected to reach 7 million units by the end of the year, up an estimated 25 percent, while sales of black-and-white sets declined 31 percent. Growing sales of color sets were buoyed by broadcasters speeding up their switch to color. The 1966-67 TV season was the first in which all three networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — aired their complete prime time schedules in color. This enabled pubescent teenaged boys everywhere to dream of Barbara "Jeannie" Eden's suddenly flesh-colored belly button.

But it would be another five years before color reached a distinction that digital television reached last year — outselling the technology it was replacing.

It's funny how little things have changed. Sure, CE sales are a little more impressive than they were 40 years ago — 2007 sales are expected to top $160 billion and around 30 million digital DTVs are expected to be sold. And Jack now recalls there were 200 exhibitors, mostly NARDA members, and 17,5000 attendees at that first CES, which next week should reach nearly 3,000 exhibitors squeezed into around 2 million square feet of exhibit space, with 150,000 attendees jostling to gaze with wonder at the latest microprocessor-driven gadgets.

But 40 years later, we're again fighting an unpopular war, the Middle East is exploding, we have no real world heavyweight champion, a 16-year-old TV star's belly is a major topic of conversation and, at the Mirage at least, people are still ooh-ing and aah-ing The Beatles.

Jack hasn't changed that much, either. According to a mutual friend, the 85-year-old dynamo conducted several radio interviews from his hospital bed only a few days after open heart surgery.

Get well soon, Jack, even if you don't remember my name.

Posted by Stewart Wolpin on December 27, 2007 | Comments (1)