Fergus Cassidy

Hit record

TELEVISION and the video cassette recorder were the bookends of my father's working life.

As a technician with Philips in Dublin he had witnessed the first flicker of a black and white cathode ray tube and was there for its technicolour transformation many years later.

He retired just as the first VCRs appeared and was glad to leave it to others to mull over the manuals. He knew the VCR would change television. That the ability to record and re-watch television programmes would dilute some of its magnetic magic.

Maybe the first chink in the armour of an all-conquering new media had been exposed. I took it as a sign of my father's ambivalence toward VCRs that our house never gave succour to one of them or any of its kin.

Back then, television programmes were all 'live'. If you missed something on telly that was it. Chances are, you would never get to see it.

These were the days when Americans dreamed up 'the water cooler moment' to describe the leap from television screen to communal chit-chat. A period where deserted streets meant something huge was happening on the telly. Where families fought over turning the TV off at meal times, encouraged by the prophetic prodding of those who lamented the retreat of conversation.

Legend has it in Britain that The Forsyte Saga series was responsible for dramatically reducing congregations at Evensong services and pub owners' flocks also strayed. In the mid-1960s, the BBC delayed the transmission of comedy Till Death Us Do Part on election night at the request of government, lest Alf Garnett proved more enticing than Harold Wilson.

The arrival of the first VCR put an end to all that. Following a rival format war the Video Home System (VHS) unlocked the handcuffs of time and fast-forwarded viewers from the hypnosis of advertising.

Now that the death-notice for the VCR was finally read out by retail giant Dixons last week (it will no longer stock them), the funeral can proceed. There will be few who shed tears. Alone from previous generations, we have become immune to death by obsolescence.

I, however, do not grieve the passing of the VCR because there is much to celebrate in this marvellous machine. In its achievements and the lasting legacy it leaves behind.

The VCR is a unique and timely example of how a newly-born innovative technology miraculously escaped the daggers of the marketplace Herods. The US motion picture industry made it its business to crush the VCR with all its might.

In hearings before a special committee of the House of Representatives in 1982, Jack Valenti, the then head of the Motion Picture Association of American, came out with guns blazing and Clint Eastwood seated behind him.

"One of the Japanese lobbyists", railed Valenti, "has said that the VCR is the greatest friend that the American film producer ever had. I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston stranger is to the woman home alone".

Two years later in 1984, though, came the VCRs finest hour when it defeated a final attempt to have the technology outlawed. The movie studios, led by Universal, were found to have no case against VCR maker Sony for alleged copyright infringement. The court ruled that VCR technology had other important uses, chief of which was recording to watch later or time-shifting.

If successful the movie industry would have shot itself in the foot. Three years after the Sony ruling, video rental income in the US surpassed cinema ticket sales for the first time. Today movie studios can make more money from a film through video sales and rentals than from the box office.

The movie business got the VCR woefully wrong and won't own up to it. These days they're still at it and have been joined by the newer, doom-laden offspring of music and software with the big telcos bringing up the rear. For these, digital innovation combined with the internet is like dawn to a vampire.

Much of the fog created by copyright is no more than a smoke screen. A frenzied attempt at milking the last drop of falling revenues while holding back the tide of innovation, blind to their connection.

One of my father's favourite TV programme's was Hall's Pictorial Weekly. The programme is unknown to younger generations because it hasn't been shown in decades.

Yet RTE have opted to release a DVD (Vol. 1), rather than show it on television, eschewing its public broadcasting remit for a few euros more. The series has already been fully paid for through the license fee, yet by its behaviour RTE is skating on the thin ice of public patronage.

When there are no more video cassettes, there will be digital recorders/hard drives and a giant step closer to distribution via internet innovation. That's the future, kickstarted by the ability to record.

Anything else is just a rewind.