Today is a significant date in both business and retail history because on April 30, 1939, U.S. commercial television debuted at the New York World's Fair, with the help of a signal transmission from the top of the Empire State Building.
The value of the birth of commercial television is inestimable to life, to business, and to the retail industry. Without television there wouldn't have been much of a category for Best Buy (BBY) to kill. In a U.S. retail industry without television, there would be no Super Bowl commercials, no effective way for Jim Cramer to rant and scream about retail stocks, and no way to give hourly retail employees a face and a voice by an Undercover Boss. Without commercial television the Home Shopping Network would be the Sears catalogue, and the quality of life would have been diminished without the pocket fishermen, ThighMasters, Bowflex machines, and George Foreman Grills peddled to the masses on infomercials.
Whenever retailers find themselves saying that something is a passing fad - like e-gift cards, mobile shopping apps, Facebook, and Pinterest, for example - it would be a good idea to remember that 1939 world's fair attendees probably thought the same thing about some crazy picture box that needed the world's tallest building to operate. Retailers can either embrace technology or get trampled by it. Either way, today's consumer technology marches quickly on, with or without retailer participation.
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