Zenith Punched Right Button With Couch Spuds In Its Wake, TV Remote Control Turns 40

“As you can see, that line of thundershowers is moving southward …” CLICK. “… to emerging markets. Taiwan, which is scheduled for …” CLICK. “… great fishing and hunting in Alaska.”

His thumb never leaves the button. It’s there in case he becomes slightly bored, angered or just wants to CLICK. As long as the controller of the remote control is controlling it, all is right with the world.

Forty years ago, there was no remote control. The Earth was without form, and the same show was on the face of the TV screen for more than two minutes. And usually for the duration of the program.

Yes, 40 years ago, folks actually had to get up, walk over to the television and turn a knob to change channels. Or tell their kid to do it.

But in June 1956, when Zenith Electronics Corp. came out with the Zenith Space Command Remote TV Control (“Nothing between you and the set but space!”), both television viewing and society were about to be revolutionized.

The couch potato generation was born. And the remote control became its greatest weapon.

“Once you have had one, you can never go back,” says Zenith consumer affairs vice president Steve Sigman. Or more than one, in his case.

“It’s a major inconvenience to have to lean all the way over on the couch to reach the remote,” he says. “I want one on this end of the couch and on the other end of the couch. That way I don’t have to lean over.”

In a poll conducted by Magnavox last year, 18 percent of the women and 9 percent of the men surveyed said they would rather give up sex than the remote control for one week.

Those survey results came at the same time the company released its Remote Locator television model, along with a commercial in which a husband, after looking for the remote, pushes the “power on” button on the television, causing the remote to beep in another room. When he gets there, he finds it on a pillow next to his wife, vamping in a sexy negligee.

“Thanks, honey,” he says, grabbing the remote the remote and heading back to the television room.

According to Sigman, the remote was “an instant hit” when it was first marketed 40 years ago. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it became a household fixture.

In that decade, the number of U.S. homes with remotes grew from 15 percent to 85 percent, says James R. Walker, chairman of the mass communications department at Chicago’s St. Xavier University. He and Robert Bellamy, associate professor of communication at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, wrote about the effects that the remote has had on television and in the American home in the recently released “TV and the Remote Control” (Guilford Press, $30).

Zenith’s founder, Eugene F. McDonald Jr., despised TV commercials and pushed for the development of a remote control, so he and the rest of television-viewing America could get rid of them without getting up and changing the channel.

The wired remote they first came up with in the early ‘50s, called Lazy Bones, didn’t take off, because folks kept tripping over the cable from the control to the TV set. Another model flopped because ordinary sunlight could set it off.

The Space Command, which sounded like a humming stapler, wasn’t perfect. A jingling dog’s collar or the sound of a piggy bank being emptied could change channels or turn off the television. But it was close enough.

Today, there are dozens of models of remote controls. But no matter what the shape or size, the remote has become an icon of power in domestic relationships.

In their book, Walker and Bellamy conclude that men are more likely to be the wielder of the remote in couples 30 years and older. In younger couples, the gender difference is more difficult to discern, Walker said.

Men of all ages are more likely to graze, or switch channels constantly, than women, Walker says.

Women generally have the television on in the background as they move about the house doing other things, and they keep it on the same channel, he said. “Men tend to give their full attention to the television when they’re watching it,” he said. “When you graze, you have to really be tending to TV. You can’t do it while reading the paper or doing something else.”

The reason men surf channels goes back almost to prehistory, says Marvin Bensman, a professor of communications at the University of Memphis in Tennessee who has studied behavior and the remote control.

“It is the hunter instinct at work,” he said. “They are always looking for ‘prey’ in new territory.”

And others get angry at people changing channels, because they have lost control.

“A remote control is great when you have it, but when the other person has it, it’s awful,” sums up Alan James, a salesman.