Interviews with Digital Media Thought Leaders

A Point-and-Shoot Camcorder for the Mass Market

Podcast Video | Posted by Phil Leigh on July 11, 2007

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Owing to exponential growth at YouTube nearly everyone is conscious of Internet video. Increasingly, many of us want to make our own. As a result, companies are starting to market un-complex “point-and-shoot” camcorders that make the process simple enough for the mass market.
 
Today’s guest is Rich Phipps who is Director of Business Development at Thomson Audio Video, which markets under the venerable RCA brand. Recently they introduced a $129 “point-and-shoot” camcorder that stores the pictures in solid state memory, instead of tape.

For those of us with some grey hair, RCA is a familiar brand. However, many may not realize that the name is an abbreviation for Radio Corporation of America.
 
During the 1920s, RCA was one of the hottest stocks on Wall Street. It had all the cache that Apple holds today, and with good reason. It was the dominant factor in the then burgeoning field of radio and was even experimenting with television. Moreover, RCA president David Sarnoff had all the charisma of Steve Jobs, as well as his own reality distortion field.
 
For example, legend (falsely) holds that while working as a humble wireless operator at American Marconi, a young Sarnoff was one of the first to hear the distress signals from RMS Titanic. When the USA later entered World War I he was among those who felt, as a matter of national security, that Marconi must be made to sell their radio patents to the United States Government where they could be pooled with those of the Navy.
 
As the purchase was being arranged, Sarnoff (together Edison’s General Electric) argued that the Marconi-U.S. Navy patent monopoly could be better administered by a private company than by the Government. This led to the birth of the Radio Corporation of America. Thus, in a methodology ringing with familiar echoes today, RCA could trace the roots of its wealth all the way back to the generosity of U.S. taxpayer.
 
During World War II Sarnoff resisted royalty-free licensing of RCA patents to the Government, but he did tour the European front and returned in a Red Cross uniform. Upon completion of the tour he successfully lobbied for a brigadier general’s star and thereafter preferred to be addressed as “General Sarnoff”.

But, that’s another story, and a good one. 

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