TV Sales Slide

Wall Street Journal:

Consumers appear to be turning down the volume on television purchases.

As the largest specialty-electronics retailers get set to report year-end results, recent consumer surveys and comments from a TV supplier and from club stores point to slowing TV demand. The category has been among the few bright spots in big-ticket spending for the home as the economy has weakened.

TV sales were expected to slow this year after a couple of big years tied to technology improvements and following the usual surge around the holidays, but some industry watchers suspect sales have slowed even more than anticipated.

"People are going into sort of a nesting phenomenon, trying to hold on to what they have," said Paul Carton, director of research for ChangeWave Research, which surveys more than 4,000 tech aficionados each month. Even those consumers seem to be pulling back, Mr. Carton said.

Read the whole story: Wall Street Journal

Comments

[WIpatriot]

Super Bowl is over.

[drkazmd65]

Let's see,.... let me sum it up (at least for myself):

Most families are feeling an economic crunch where their costs of transportation, energy, and food are rising 5-10% per year (or more) while their housing costs are (at best) not going down and their home market 'value' is stagnant or decreasing, and salaries have not kept up with real inflation for years and years,.....

Somehow the idea that in that circumstance the sales of big-ticket, high-price, optional items like big-screen TVs would decrease is a logical extension. If you don't have a wall to hang a new flat-screen TV upon,... why buy a new one?

[gcallaghan]

I hate to break the news to the TV retailers but THERE'S A RECESSION GOING ON! Pick up a newspaper or turn off Fux news and learn about it.

Got soup?

[billu]

Exclusive of the high end videophile market from the time I was a kid until HDTV became hot a pretty good TV cost about 400. Every year they would add another feature or two and keep the pricepoint about equal. Now the base price is in the 2000-1000 range. With the amount of money you need to shell out they have jumped a bit out of the commodity gadget price so people are not refreshing them as much as is needed to keep the sales going. They need to decrease the pricepoint so that they can saturate the rest of the market and keep sales at a sustainable pace.

[gcallaghan]

i just bought an off-brand 22" HD set to replace a 21" Sony digital that went out.. It's still hard to justify spending much more than $400 on what is basically a distraction from boredom.

[ErnestineBass]

If you don't have HBO, there's nothing much worth watching anyway.

[MilwaukeeDan]

EB, Bill Maher said it best, something like, "you don't need to spend $3K on a TV to watch Hogan's Heroes".

[drkazmd65]

I knew that there was a reason I liked watching Real time,.... Too bad I don't have cable any more and have to watch the snippets online a week later.

[FaaLaveLave]

SURPRISE! People are struggling to pay the higher prices of fuel, for cars and heating, to put food on the table and millions have lost/are losing their homes...........DUH. Should we be shocked that they are not "upgrading" their televisions? I don't think so. The network news people have let us down for the past 8 years, programming stinks on MSM, with cable and satellite costs continuing to escalate. Not to mention that most homes have multiple televisions presently.
The American people have much more important things to be concerned with than a new television and, furthermore, it is my bet that this huge $600 tax rebate won't make any real difference either. We have dental bills that will be taken care of by that "huge chunk" of money.......
Our lives are degraded on virtually every front and we are supposed to be so brainless as to make non-essential purchases when a little cash is thrown our way. The whole thing makes me nauseous.