Tele1st: One Of The Biggest Flops in TV History

This is The Chronicles of Trevor, the only blog that never flops at making entertaining posts!

Product failures. The epitome of corporate flops every time. They can happen in any medium, from frozen food:

to video games,

to your favorite soda.

But I'm not talking about that today. In this blog post, we'll tell the tale of a subscription television service from the 1980s that flopped so hard, that only 4,000 people in the Windy City ever subscribed to it. I'm talking about the one, the only, Tele1st (pronounced "TeleFirst".)

But first, a little history. Chicago was one of the handful of cities in the US that didn't allow cable television services. A few TV stations decided to create over-the-air blocks that were similar to the most popular cable network at the time, Home Box Office (HBO): a service that you needed to pay a fee in order to view movies and original programming. The most famous of these over-the-air subscription TV services was ON-TV, founded in 1979. This service allowed subscribers to watch a variety of programming, such as movies, sports, and adult entertainment. In fact, the Ft. Lauderdale ON-TV affiliate, ironically having the call letters of WKID, aired hardcore films in late night hours as part of the adult entertainment block, titled Adults Only.

Over in Massachusetts, where this blog originates, the TV station in Worcester, WSMW 27, aired a service called Preview, which in its later years, was acquired by ON-TV. Nowadays, WSMW is known by WUNI, and is the Univision owned-and-operated (O&O) station for New England. This is the case for many of these stations, as most former subscription stations became affiliated with Spanish-speaking networks, most notably Telemundo, Univision, and UniMas.

But I digress. The successes of ON-TV and its counterparts sparked a new idea from ABC. Yes, that ABC. The new idea, a service where subscribers could record their own programming for viewing at a later time. After some engineering tests, and a trip to Sony HQ in Japan for the technology needed, their idea became a reality, a service known as Tele1st.

Tele1st, touted as the "Entertainment Recording Service", first premiered on January 17, 1984 at 2:00 AM, after ABC O&O WLS in Chicago signed off for the night. Subscribers recieved a descrambler box the size of a computer tower. 

This allowed users to record programming from a VCR onto a VHS tape for viewing later, because a countdown would play, containing the codes for descrambling the programming. This countdown was accompanied by a futuristic stock synthesized tune by the Kevin McLeod of the 1980s, Keith Mansfield.

This is a capture of what a Tele1st station ID looks like in the Sony-developed scrambled state:

It is in negative colors, and the audio is pitched higher, and accompanied by loud pop-like sounds. 

Other services, like ON-TV just messed with the video signal of the program, by using a rogue 15 hertz frequency. The decoder box would remove the frequency, and therefore make the signal more viewable.

This is what that looks like.

The descrambling codes would change every month, so Tele1st tapes recorded in March won't work in April. So the only way to watch your Tele1st recordings after the monthly period would be to record off the tape using another VCR.

I'm imagining some lazy Chicagoan trying to daisy-chain 2 VCR's to their TV set, trying to get a copy of their Tele1st tapes so they can watch 'em forever. But back in 1984, 2 VCRs would've cost an arm and a leg, so they must've been a higher-class city-dweller. 

And subscribers could only watch 4 programs per month, which were usually a small selection of box office bombs, and miscellaneous lifestyle and children's programming. Tele1st would only air 1 movie every 2 weeks. Tele1st would cease operations at the end of June in 1984.

Like I said in the beginning, Tele1st only had 4,000 subscribers at its peak, and was a total flop.

If I were in charge ABC at the time, I would have dropped the Tele1st project, and acquired WCVB from Metromedia. For a station with such a unique numeral 5 logo, you'd expect it to be an O&O, so I'd acquire them for the same amount of money used as the budget for Tele1st.

Other than that, Tele1st would go on to be a failure along the lines of Colgate Lasagna, New Coke, and the LJN Video Art.