TVs Last Longer but 10 Years May Be It

Do you love to be scared? Do you think that the most sublime moment in American cinema is the scene in "Alien" where that Cuisinart with eyes comes ripping out of that guy's chest? While your friends were playing with Barbie or GI Joe, did you ask for a Godzilla doll for Christmas? Do you think Stephen King is a laugh a minute?

Then try this one: It's Jan. 27 in Tampa. The Super Bowl. It's late in the fourth quarter. The Niners (yes, the Niners) are down by six and Joe Montana is getting That Look. He's driving. It's fourth and three and they decide to go for it. Montana drops back, Jerry Rice slips a defender and breaks into the clear. Montana sets, releases and BEEEEeeeeooooooop. . . .

The picture on the TV implodes into a tiny white dot. Something in the guts of the box has given up the ghost.

The crowd you've invited over for the game goes berserk. They scream. They tear their hair. They sling clam dip against the walls. They bang on the TV. It refuses to work. They rip it from the wall and throw it out the window. They come at you with chairs. They punch you silly and then break into the neighbors' house, crazed for a functional TV. The police come. Your friends tell their story. The cops arrest you. They throw away the key. You rot in prison. Charles Manson is your roommate.

Hideous, isn't it? The stuff of sweaty nightmares. Let me make it a little worse: If your TV is about 10 years old, you may be viewing on borrowed time.

The days when something behind the picture tube went poof and Ed Sullivan disappeared from view and a little wisp of smoke trailed out of the box may be gone. No longer do you stumble down to the drugstore with dad, your arms full of suspicious vacuum tubes, to plug each one of them in turn into the mysterious tube tester and watch the little needle confirm every one of them as being either broken or in perfect working order.

No, today's television sets have only one vacuum tube--the picture tube--and are filled not with little hunks of glass that light up, but a labyrinth of sophisticated solid state circuits that normally keep chugging away for years, providing fans of "Love Boat" reruns with the finest in video entertainment.

Still, no one has managed to design a printed circuit that is eternal, so TVs continue to break. They just don't do it as often. They are, however, governed by the same natural laws that apply to a dropped open-face peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. Just as the sandwich never lands sticky side up, the TV never breaks during summer reruns. It always goes while you're watching Episode 5 of "The Civil War." The reasons are complex.