Although home video scholars often position the EVR (CBS’s Electronic Video Recording) as a failure, I argue that it is best understood as a threshold format that articulated new possibilities for television by linking it to existing but divergent technologies and practices: the phonograph, film cartridges, print, and interactivity. As developed through original document research built from the Motorola archives, newspapers, biographies, promotional materials, and a range of trade journals, I show how the EVR contributed to ongoing negotiations over the meaning of television and demonstrate the value of threshold format as an analytic lens attuned to formats that boast little or no material existence but which occupy pivotal positions within ongoing experiments into how “old” technologies can be refigured to offer new possibilities and opportunities. Whereas successfully standardized formats tend to obscure the possibilities that came before them, attending to threshold formats redirects our attention to forgotten ambitions and potentials.
CanavilhasJoão. 2012. “From Remediation to Convergence: Looking at the Portuguese Media.” Brazilian Journalism Research8 (1): 7–21.
22.
CanbyEdward Tatnall. 1970. “EVR at Take-off.” DB4 (7): 32.
23.
DawsonMax. 2007. “Home Video and the ‘TV Problem’: Cultural Critics and Technological Change.” Technology and Culture48 (3): 524–49.
24.
DeMottBenjamin. 1971. “EVR: Teacher in a Cartridge.” Change3 (1): 41.
25.
DouglasSusan. 2010. “Some Thoughts on ‘How Do New Things Happen?’”Technology and Culture51 (2): 293–304.
26.
DriscollCatherineGreggMelissa. 2011. “Convergence Culture and the Legacy of Feminist Cultural Studies.” Cultural Studies24 (4-5): 566–84.
27.
FieldRoger Kenneth. 1970. “In the Sixties, It Was TV; in Seventies, Video Cassette.” New York Times, July7, 9.
28.
GaleSamual C.1971. “What about Software?”Business Screen32 (2): 29–30.
29.
GaltonLawrence. 1970. “More for Your Money.” Chicago Tribune, July19, 13.
30.
GitelmanLisa. 2006. Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
31.
GitelmanLisa. 2014. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham: Duke University Press.
32.
GitelmanLisaPingreeGeoffrey. 2003. “What’s New about New Media?” In New Media, 1740-1915, edited by GitelmanLisaPingreeGeoffrey, xi–xxii. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
GoldmarkPeter C.1973. Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS. New York: Saturday Review Press.
35.
GouldJack. 1968. “CBS Makes Color Movies on Black-White Film.” New York Times, December11, 1.
36.
GouldJack. 1970a. “Color TV Tapes Shown in Home.” New York Times, March25, 75.
37.
GouldJack. 1970b. “Renting a Movie or a Professor to Take Home.” New York Times, April5, 107.
38.
GouldJack. 1970c. “The Great Day Isn’t Exactly at Hand.” New York Times, November15, 21.
39.
HallEverett. 1970. “Audiovisuals of the 1970s.” Business Screen31 (6): 27.
40.
HappéL. B.1965. “The Silent Single Concept Film.” Journal of the University Film Producers Association17 (2): 3–7.
41.
HenningMichelle. 2007. “New Lamps for Old: Photography, Obsolescence, and Social Change.” In Residual Media, edited by AclandCharles, 48–65. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
42.
IsenbergBarbara. 1970. “Video Cassettes Offer Potential for Future but Problems for Now.” The Wall Street Journal, December16, 1.
43.
JenkinsHenry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press.
44.
JonesWillie D.2000. “Thirty Years Ago . . . A Blockbuster Innovation.” IEEE Spectrum, September, 80R4.
45.
KnollJ. H.1972. “Audiovision for Information and Entertainment.” Report for Committee for Out-of-School Education and Cultural Development, February23, 10.
46.
LardnerJames. 1987. Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of the VCR. New York: W.W. Norton.
47.
LatourBruno. 1987. Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
48.
LipartitoKenneth. 2003. “Picturephone and the Information Age: The Social Meaning of Failure.” Technology and Culture44 (1): 50–81.
49.
MartinCharles H.1977. “Advertising and the Higgledy-Piggledy Media in Two Thousand Ought One.” Paper presented at Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism, Madison, August, 4–8.
50.
Martin-VegueCharles A.Jr.MorrisAlbert J.RosenbergJerome M.TallmadgeGene E.1971. “Technical and Economic Factors in University Instructional Television Systems.” Proceedings of the IEEE59 (6): 947–48.
51.
McCrayW. Patrick. 2001. “What Makes a Failure?: Designing a New National Telescope, 1975-1984.” Technology and Culture42 (2): 265–91.
52.
McLeanFrancisRogersB.J.1971. “Color EVR.” The Royal Television Society Journal13 (11): 248–251.
53.
MooreFrank L.1971. “Visual Cues for an Aural Art.” Music Educators Journal57 (5): 58–60.
54.
NewmanMichael. 2014. Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium. New York: Columbia University Press.
55.
New York Times. 1968. “Times and CBS Will Make Films.” December11, 38.
PetersBenjamin. 2009. “And Lead Us Not into Thinking the New Is New: A Bibliographic Case for New Media History.” New Media & Society11: 13–30.
61.
PinchTrevor J.BijkerWiebe E.1984. “The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other.” Social Studies of Science, 14: 399–441.
62.
RogersEverett M.2003. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th ed.New York: Free Press.
63.
RohrbachEdward. 1967. “Video Playback Idea Draws British Interest.” Chicago Tribune, September17, N12.
64.
RosenblattRobert A.1971. “TV Cassette Firms Go Separate Ways.” March7, I1.
65.
RubinsteinEllis. 1976. “Then Came EVR.” IEEE Spectrum, October, 95.
66.
SmithCecil. 1970. “Cassettes May Change the Future of TV, Films.” Los Angeles Times, April23, E1.
67.
SmithWilliam D.1972. “A Scientist Is ‘Reborn.’”New York Times, May7, F5.
68.
SterneJonathan. 2003. The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press.
69.
SterneJonathan. 2007. “Out with the Trash: On the Future of New Media.” In Residual Media, edited by AclandC. R., 16–31. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
70.
SterneJonathan. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham: Duke University Press.
71.
The Wall Street Journal. 1967. “CBS Creates Fourth Major Operating Unit, Calls It CBS/Comtec.” October27, 6.
72.
The Wall Street Journal. 1969. “New ‘Magazine’ Slated for Release in 1970 On Video Cartridges.” May12, 5.
73.
The Wall Street Journal. 1971. “CBS Will Phase Out Most of Its Electronic Video Recording Work.” December23, 4.
74.
Time. 1968. “The Genius at CBS.” 91 (25): 80–1.
75.
Time. 1970. “Video Cartridges: A Promise of Future Shock.” 96 (6): 48.
76.
WallerGregory. 2011. “Projecting the Promise of 16mm, 1935–45.” In Useful Cinema, edited by AclandCharles R.WassonHaidee, 125–148. Durham: Duke University Press.
77.
WasserFrederick. 2002. Veni, Vidi, Video: The Hollywood Empire and the VCR. Austin: University of Texas Press.
78.
WassonHaidee. 2013. “Protocols of Portability.” Film History25 (1-2): 236–47.
79.
WilliamsRaymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
80.
Wren-LewisJ.1968. “Electronic Video Recording and Reproduction.” In Television in Postgraduate and Continuing Medical Education, edited by C. EngelE.Li MeyrickR., 45–46. London: British Medical Association.
81.
WuTim. 2010. The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
82.
YarboroughJ. E.1971. “Electronic Video Recording and Reproduction.” Scottish Medical Journal16 (1): 73–74.
