Let The Stars And Stripes Forever Be Our Product

Now it’s nearly complete.

According to recent business reports, the Zenith Electronics Corp. is about to sell out to LG Electronics, a Seoulbased manufacturing firm.

That means the final nail is about to be hammered into the coffin of American-owned television manufacturing.

Zenith Electronics is the last American firm in the business of making television sets.

Zenith’s impending sale is sad since television, as the world knows it today, is essentially an American invention. Although several foreign scientists produced an extremely limited “mechanical television,” Vladimir K. Zworykin, a Russian-born American scientist, invented the “iconoscope” and the “kinescope” in 1923. The iconoscope was the first television camera tube suitable for broadcasting. The kinescope is the picture tube used in TV receivers. Zworykin created the first completely electronic, practical television system back in 1929.

The development of television was slowed during World War II. In 1945, there were probably fewer than 10,000 television sets in America. The figure soared to approximately 6 million in 1950, and to nearly 60 million by 1960.

In 1985, a worldwide audience estimated at 1.5 billion people - perhaps the largest audience in television history - watched the “Live Aid” concert, a benefit for famine victims in Africa.

For most of the years television has been widely available, black and white and later color sets were manufactured in America. Several decades ago, about 25 U.S. companies produced television sets of various sizes. Competition was keen. Many of them consolidated while others went out of business, as Japanese imports flooded the market (some of which, later on, began to be assembled in the United States).

Overseas companies purchased most of the survivors. Today, Philips Electronics NV of the Netherlands owns Magnavox and Sylvania. Thomson SA of France bought the RCA and General Electric brands in 1987. That same year, Zenith became the last U.S.-owned television manufacturer.

Zenith struggled to survive, but lacks the funds to remain firmly in the big leagues. The infusion of money from the South Korean firm may be the only way the Zenith Corp., which has been cash-poor for some time, can remain afloat.

LG Electronics, which has been doing business with Zenith since the ‘70s, is attracted to Zenith’s premium brand, its technological edge and some of its components.

Zenith ranks third in U.S. television set sales. The company is a leader in the development of high-definition television, a technology slated to soon become the U.S. standard. Zenith has not produced a full-year profit from its operations in nearly a dozen years.

If the proposed $165 million deal between Zenith and LG Electronics goes into effect this fall, $150 million will go into expanding and modernizing Zenith’s picture tube plant in Melrose Park, Ill. Four other Zenith plants are located in Mexico.

Under the terms of the sale, LG Electronics will gain access to Zenith’s work on high-definition television sets and on flat, high-resolution screens for computers and televisions. The firm’s president, John Koo, has not disclosed whether more U.S. plants will be built under Zenith’s new ownership.

Meanwhile, labels reading “Made in the U.S.A.” seem to be increasingly rare these days. The selling of America continues, as more and more products once made under the U.S. flag - from automobiles to zippers - are being produced abroad.

Come to think of it, even Old Glory - perhaps the nation’s most sacred symbol - is no longer a completely home-based product. According to U.S. Census data, the United States last year imported 849,912 American flags from 11 countries. The bulk of them came from Taiwan, which exported 722,349. Israel followed with 62,465. China ranks third among exporters of U.S. flags with 56,480.

Importing television sets is one thing. Importing American flags is another. It seems reasonable to me that if America has problems keeping manufacturing jobs within our borders, one thing it could do to protect our interests is to ban the importation of American flags from foreign countries. By producing our own flags, we could at least keep some jobs here at home.

Many of the flags from overseas do not even meet the standards of the U.S. flag code. If American flags were produced entirely at home, when citizens stand to salute our national banner, they might exult in the knowledge that we still have at least one product left that is “as American as apple pie.”

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