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Renting Tellies

Brummagemite

Brummagemite

True Brummagem Lad
I saw something on the news the other night about getting televisions on tick, and it reminded me how we used to rent our old telly back in the late 1960s and 1970s. We rented ours from College Radio on Weoley Castle Square, mind I can’t recall how much it was. If it broke we could take in for repair, and I think you were given a replacement whilst that was being done. It was a number of years before we could afford to buy one outright, and when we did it was quite an expense. Anyone else remember this?
 
Thanks Dave. Sorry, what I meant was anybody remember renting their telly from College Radio on the Square at Weoley Castle? It was next door to the post office there, on the same side as Lawrence’s. Apologies for not making myself clearer. I also don’t know why it was called College Radio either, anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
Brummagemite said:
Thanks Dave. Sorry, what I meant was anybody remember renting their telly from College Radio on the Square at Weoley Castle? It was next door to the post office there, on the same side as Lawrence’s. Apologies for not making myself clearer. I also don’t know why it was called College Radio either, anyone have any thoughts on this?
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That's quite alright..however, it did highlight the fact that most of our "possessions" were rented, including our dwellings.
Dave A
 
Yes, lots of people rented a TV. Some had a coin slot on the back, a kind of pay as you view system
 
Hi All,
I also remember the TV Shop in Weoley Square called College Radios.I can only guess that it was named after another shop with the same name and owners. Does anyone know of a shop called College Radios possibly situated in College Road somewhere? However Daves comment that most of our possessions were rented is true and, in my opinion this was better. Today we see young couples struggling to save for a deposit to buy a house and get married. More often than not it is an impossible task so they do get married (or settle into a long term relationship) and move in with relatives or friends and everyone's life is disrupted . There were more private landlords about with more properties available. My parents, for instance, rented from Jack Cotton and Partners, a large and reputable company. Apart from a period during the war, when they were bombed out, my parents lived and brought up their family perfectly happily throughout their married years in the same house 44, Carlton Road, Small Heath.
I realise and apologise that this has gone completely off thread and ask that perhaps one of our good moderators could transfer this to a new thread.
Old Boy
adap2it said:
That's quite alright..however, it did highlight the fact that most of our "possessions" were rented, including our dwellings.
Dave A
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TVs seem to have been rented by 'radio' shops. I suppose radio shops could make the transition to TVs because it was similar technology at the time. We had ours from Radio Rentals, unusual for us as my dad never agreed to any form of rental agreement (my mum must have done it !)
As part of the rental it was reassuring that an engineer would come out to fix your rented TV. And TVs were an exorbitant price to buy at first. When colour TVs came in, even worse. But that still seems to be the trend even today. When newer technology products are first on the market they're very pricey. Viv.
 
Dad rented our first TV from 'Good Listening' which was possibly a Birmingham company although I may be wrong about that. It had a built in VHF radio tuner which was completely useless but we discovered later they hadn't installed the correct aerial!
 
Just remembered another thing about renting TVs is that you got a decent TV. We had a very modern one, it was almost a statement piece in our living room. It had silver knobs and speaker and was encased in a light teak. A bit like having a sleek stereogram (remember those ?). Transformed your living room into an up-to-the-minute home. Well that was how I felt about it at the time. Viv.
 
A few years back I put on a pic of a TV I rented in the early 1970s. Colour TVs were not reliable back then so I rented.
oldMohawk said:
A photo of my son watching our rented TV in the 1970s. Apologies for the 1970s decor I thought it was good at the time! When I look at the old sit-coms on TV I often see those curtains and notice the 'spider plant' parked on the TV ...
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image from https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/televisions.43388/#post-516055 only visible if logged in
 
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nice family photo phil...not sure about our black and white tv but for certain our colour one would have been rented...would not have afforded to buy one outright..

lyn
 
we had our rental from Boyed on Aston cross a couple of doors away from the libary and by the time our old man got his finger out to get us a black and white every body else had the colour by then and i think he only rented it watch randolf turpin boxing match on that saturday night and the following night sunday which was sunday the tele was playing up he ranted and got up and took the back off it
and when he did out jumped a mouse we all shouted and jumped up on chairs until he got it monday morning took it back and ranted at the shop manager whom replaced it for another one
 
On another thread I recently posted that we got our first TV from Lewis's. Now I'm not so sure...it may have come from Jolly's on Witton Circle. Anyway, it was a Pye 12", and I think the V7 model which, according to the Pye TV website, cost £61.11.0 in 1953. If my dad was on £20 a week in those days, then that would have been it - he'd have had to rent. It really was a crap TV. It took an age for the many valves to warm up, and even then the picture was blurred. But my dad being my dad, he thought he was up to the task, and most evenings spent many a sweary hour trying to get it right. However, having said that, when we came back to these shores in 1981 we rented a colour TV from Radio Rentals, and it was good as gold. But nowhere near as good as the modern flat-screen job which in my experience is ultra-reliable and cost-wise, almost as cheap as chips. Time moves on.
 
Buying a TV set was incredibly expensive in comparison with today’s prices. If, as Gig Gee says, their TV was £61.11.0 in 1953. The average wage of a tradesman was £9.30 a week.

The £61.11.0 in 1953 sounds about right to me as my dad bought a black and white TV from Fowlers on Sutton New Road in Erdington for about £98.00. At the time, his average wage would have been around £15.85.

BBC 2 came out in April 1964, he was furious because his TV would not play the new channel

One interesting point is how the TV was to become a piece of furniture and the layout of the Living room revolved around the TV set.
 
We had our TV though Telebank with a 50p meter on the back. We used to get about a quarter of our money back when the meter was emptied each month.
 
This advert for Radio Rentals was shown in the Sunday Mercury in March 1959. It shows the disparity between renting from 8 shillings and fourpence per week or buying from 67 guineas. There were many Radio Rentals shops in Birmingham with the city one being at 13 Piccadilly Arcade. Dave.
 

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Many thanks to everybody for all the replies. I was worried I might not get much of a response, so I’m glad to see all the postings everyone’s made.

I’d not heard about these tellies with meters on the back, that Morturn and Frothblower talk about, for ten bob coins. My grandparents did have an electric meter, and more than once someone forgot to put the money in before it ran out so we’d be plunged into darkness!

It’s been really interesting reading all about memories of renting tellies, from Vivienne14, jukebox, Astoness and Big Gee, and great to see OldMohawk’s photo of his telly and farmerdave’s advert for Radio Rentals. I certainly agree with all the comments about prices, and the affordability of renting, as well as how the furniture was laid out so as to put the telly at the centre of the living room.

Thank you also for the link to the other thread Viv, where Harvey3 talks about College Radio, and the prefabs – I’d forgotten about those! I think you’re right, and it would make sense that radio shops should have made the transition to selling tellies.

It seems Old Boy might be on to something about why it was called College Radios, as someone kindly looked things up in the trade directories at the library and there was a ‘College Radio & Electric’ at 768 College Road in Erdington. The only thing is that this was from the 1950s, but the ‘College Radio & Cycles’ on Weoley Castle Square as there in the 1930??

Anyhow, thank you again for all the responses.
 
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Vivienne14 said:
Did Rumbelows rent tellies ? Viv.
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Yes, at the time that this discussion is based on almost any shop that handled TV and radios, had a rental scheme. Forward Trust the finance arm of Midland Bank had a section that 'bought these rentals at a profitable rate which allowed the dealer to increase their rental market and some of the dealers also rented out 'white goods'. For a lot of the shops this allowed them to expand, merge or takeover rivals. And yes Raio Rentals did what it said on the shop sign.
Bob
 
Another thing I can remember about rented 'tellies' is that the screen was actually behind a sheet of glass. With coal fires, etc, a film of dust would build up on the front of the screen (cathode ray tube) and periodically, an 'engineer' would attend to clear away the film. IIRC, the 'tube' was fitted on some sort of rail that could be retracted to enable cleaning.

This 'cleaning' was included within the price of the 'rental' whereas, with a unit purchased outright, would have an additional cost.
 
I was 14 just started work 1964 when Mother and I got a tv , tanner in the back . I got paid on Thursday and any odd sixpences was stuck in the back . We used to get a lot back every month when it was emptied and stick the lot back in , none of this running around for a tanner if the picture cut out .
 
Ken_R said:
Another thing I can remember about rented 'tellies' is that the screen was actually behind a sheet of glass. With coal fires, etc, a film of dust would build up on the front of the screen (cathode ray tube) and periodically, an 'engineer' would attend to clear away the film. IIRC, the 'tube' was fitted on some sort of rail that could be retracted to enable cleaning.

This 'cleaning' was included within the price of the 'rental' whereas, with a unit purchased outright, would have an additional cost.
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Our first TVs were made by my dad. The first set had a 9" tube which was pretty much that diameter throughout its length and the connections at the rear were made by a 'cup' rather than a socket as on later tubes. The next set was based on a 'Visionmaster' design but Dad added a radio for the daytime when there was no TV service. It did mean that there was very little 'warming-up' when we switched to TV as only the tube had to be powered up. We then had a gap until after ITV started, when we bought a Pye set from Civic in Sheldon. One thing all these sets had in common was a glass sheet at the front but it didn't have anything to do with dust, it was for safety. Supposedly it was possible that if a CRT broke it would implode and the cathode assembly at the rear could be projected forward with enough force to break the front face, which was quite thin so as to give a good picture. Obviously no-one wanted to fire glass and metal shards at a family sitting close to the screen, (it was knee-to-knee for the 9" set!), so a sheet of armoured glass was fitted to the front of the cabinet.

Our next set was a KB 'Royal Star' which was semi-portable, having a handle on the top but being too heavy for many people to carry. That was my introduction to TV repairing. I think many of its components must have been overstressed as I replaced quite a few over the years that we kept it.

CRT technology improved as they got bigger and the front glass was no longer formed from the same material as the part that housed the electron gun so an external glass sheet was no longer required. This would have been the case for the next set we had which was our first and only rental set from Radio Rentals. I recall that the customer had to buy the spindly legs that it sat on! That must have been around 1964 and BBC2 had been launched in the Midlands and was the only station on 625 lines UHF, BBC 1 and ITV (ABC/ATV, a different company at the weekends) used 405 lines VHF. To get BBC2 you had to change the channel selector to the UHF position and then turn a tuning dial to get BBC2. As there was only one UHF station that only needed touching if the set was a bit 'off-tune'.

That set was certainly repaired at least once by Radio Rentals. Eventually it went back, (less the legs!), when I bought a large colour set of Italian manufacture from Comet at The Swan for my mum's birthday. In theory that set could have remote control fitted - at the end of a fat cable - but we didn't have that fitted, just using the pre-set buttons on the front. That set had a stand-by switch so it started up quickly - back to Dad's 1950's technology! Indeed it started up, shut down and changed channel a lot faster than today's digital replacement!
 
I recall an incident of a young lad being killed by an exploding CRT, a shard of glass hit him in the thigh when he threw a stone at a dumped TV set.

I remember my dad buying a 24" black and white TV from Fowlers on Sutton Road, Edington. Its cost around £98 not including the legs or newspaper rack. He begrudgingly bought the legs, but not the rack, making one himself later. He complained like mad not long after getting its because BBC 2 came on air and his set could not reveve it unless it had an expensive modification and an additional box fitted. He was furious, but this may date it. There was a channel changing indexed dial on the side that you had to click round to select either ITV or BBC 1, channels 8 and 4 respectively.

Like these older sets it took ages to 'warm up'.
 
We rented one from Granada ,I think they were in Erdington, looked just like the one in post 13, as did our gas fire , the first furniture gas fire, the Flavel Debonair.
When you look back and count up how much was paid for rental they cost lots more than if you bought one.
 
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