Media Wonk

Searching for the remote - February 21, 2007

Robert Adler, co-inventor of the wireless TV remote control, died last week at the age of 93,

The former Zenith engineer and physicist, perhaps inevitably, became known as the “father of the couch potato,” a charge he himself rejected. “I don’t take responsibility for couch potatoes,” he told the AP in 1996. “They really should exercise.”

But his contribution to another cultural phenomenon is beyond dispute: the long argument among broadcasters, programmers, marketers, set manufacturers and other technology providers over consumers’ right to skip commercials.

Long before TiVo or network DVR systems, long before Sputnik for that matter, Adler’s “clicker,” as the mechanically powered device became known, was designed and marketed by Zenith as a commercial-avoidance technology.

Adler and his fellow engineer Eugene Polley came up with their invention in 1956, in response to a challenge from Zenith’s then-president Eugene McDonald to design a device to eliminate commercials from TV shows.

The Space-Command remote, as it was formally known, relied on ultrasonic signals produced when the spring-loaded buttons struck short aluminum rods (thus “clicker”) and contained only such buttons: TV on/off; channel up/down; volume up/down and a mute button.

The mute button built on an earlier invention called the “Blab Off,” which was marketed as a way to kill the sound during commercials.

The Space-Command was an immediate hit and led to a spike in Zenith’s TV sales the following year.

In comments at the time, McDonald attributed the success to “remote TV tuning,” which helped viewers avoid those “long, annoying commercials,” by quickly and easily changing channels.

In the 40 years since, the arms race between hardware makers and programmers over commercial-avoidance has produced both technological innovation as well as lawsuits, regulatory battles and the endless debate over how to pay for “free TV.”

But the argument didn’t start with TiVo or ReplayTV, or even with the advent of digital technology. It’s been around longer than color TV and will continue so long as there is soap to hawk and re-runs of Friends to watch.

And the next time someone tells you “digital is different,” spare a thought for Robert Adler, may he rest in peace upon his eternal couch.

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