Instant Replay (video series)
Instant Replay was the first magazine-format, direct-to-video program for home-video consumers. Established by Miami, Florida, entrepreneur Chuck Azar in 1977, and released on VHS and Beta-format videocassettes through 1982, it contained segments devoted to live music performances, reports from technology and electronics conventions, interviews, bloopers and other off-air content from network- and cable-television satellite feeds, and home-video hobbyists' contributions, among other content. It was predated by a direct-to-video trade magazine, Videofashion, sold to fashion-industry professionals on industrial U-Matic videocassettes.
History
Instant Replay was established by Miami, Florida, entrepreneur Chuck Azar in 1977 as the first magazine-format, direct-to-video program for home-video consumers. Based in the city's Coconut Grove district, the namesake company, Instant Replay Video Magazine Inc., produced numerous editions of its magazine-format video, which ran two hours each and retailed for $59.95 initially and later $80 through 1982. Yearly subscriptions sold for $1,000 and included access to a 10,000-hour library of recorded video. Instant Replay was available both by mail order and at a small number of retail outlets.While the magazine-format video program ceased production in 1982, the company itself continues to exist as of at least 2016, as a video library of over 30,000 hours.
Previously, a direct-to-video trade magazine, Videofashion, from the New York City-based Videofashion Inc., was sold to fashion-industry professionals on industrial U-Matic videocassettes, beginning in 1976. It became nominally a consumer magazine in 1979, with one-hour videocassettes available through the Time-Life Video Club for $395 each.
Content
Each edition of Instant Replay contained approximately 10 regular segments. The "First Anniversary Issue" included:- Video News
- Video Art
- Commercial Potential, consisting of commercials from other countries, not otherwise available in the U.S. at the time
- Sports Spot, generally in the form of sports footage set to music, in the manner of proto-music videos
- Illustrated Music, including David Bowie's "Space Oddity" set to NASA footage or Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" set against footage shot from a roller coaster
- Did You Miss This?, consisting of "odds and ends from broadcast TV, HBO and elsewhere," such as "Saturday Night Live's Bill Murray popping a Polaroid flash on the Weekend Update set, thereby burning a hole in the sensitive lens of a $10,000 TV camera and giving viewers a brown spot on their screens for the rest of the show whenever that camera was used."
- Technical Corner
- Satellite News, focusing on home satellite dishes and including non-aired footage captured by hobbyists recording the continuous satellite feeds.
- Segments featuring clips sent in by "correspondents"
- Interviews, including with Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America; telecommunications mogul Ted Turner; television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin.
Editions
Two hours each unless otherwise indicated. Source:- Video Art Issue
- Video Music Issue
- First Anniversary Issue
- Flight Issue
- Funkausstellung Issue
- International Air Race & Show
- C.E.S. 1979 C.E.S. 1980
- Ecological Jazz Band
- SPTS '80
- 1980 Bacardi Speedboat Race
- Madness Takes Its Toll
- Test Tape
- ''IR Sampler''
Critical analysis and legacy
Magazine-format video programs, which one writer in 1980 dubbed "videozines," became common by the mid-1980s, running the gamut from McGraw-Hill's Aviation Week to Karl-Lorimar Home Video's Playboy Video Magazine. As one journalist wrote in 1988,Azar remained active in the video and electronics industries, serving on the policy-making council of the RIAA's video division, and through his company produced the pre-MTV half-hour weekly music-video program Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Vision on the Miami, Florida, TV station WPLG. He invented a multi-standard VCR, branded as the Instant Replay Image Translator, that could play and record both US-format NTSC and international PAL-format videocassettes.