Switching off: Jack's Audio Video will close in March
 NEWS PHOTO CHARLES LEFEBVRE Jack's Audio and Video Unlimited, owned by Ron Learmont, will be closing its doors after 60 years in business. |
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Jack's Audio Video has been the home of many firsts in selling electronic products in Medicine Hat over the last 60 years – the first TV, colour TV and plasma TV to name a few.
But the bricks and mortar storefront will soon be going the way of rabbit ears as the business will be shutting its doors some time in March.
"We're probably the oldest family-owned electronics store in Alberta," said Ron Learmont.
"The only other one that's been around longer is Radiocraft in Calgary. They've been around since '41 but they have had three owners."
Ron grew up in the business his father and store namesake Jack Learmont began in 1952.
"He was a radio repairman, that was his original job," said Ron of his father.
"He'd worked in the industry for other guys for many years. But he took the initiative and could see in the late '40s that television was coming."
The problem was not so much getting a TV in the early '50s but picking up a station, said Ron.
When Great Falls, Mont., began broadcasting, a snowy picture could be pulled down, said Ron, then Lethbridge's first station began coming through – especially during chinooks – before Medicine Hat's CHAT TV hit the airwaves.
"Then the cable companies came to town. That altered everything," said Ron of the innovation in 1963 or 1964.
"The Yuills started up Monarch Cable and brought in channels from Great Falls, Mont., plus the local channel."
Fifty years later, Ron says TV broadcasting has exploded to the point where anyone with a few dollars in their pocket can watch anything in the world.
For a while, the fallout of the new media form was good for business as families went from having one TV for the household to one in every room, said Ron.
"It has had a social impact, no doubt about it," he said of TV dominating much of families' free time.
But the technological changes which Ron's been a part of over six decades continue to amaze.
"It's all done on the Internet now, everything. The new smart Samsungs, they're crazy. You can talk to them wave at them and they respond," he said of the latest TVs.
He added the home computer and TV are moving to a point in which they are interchangeable.
In 2005, Jack's joined the Audio Video Unlimited chain as a way to compete with the larger box stores buying power.
But, Ron added, "the way things are going now, the market is so saturated, it's not profitable to be in television selling electronics."
This shift will see not only smaller outfits like Jack's be pushed out of the market due to increasingly smaller margins but many of the larger retailers as well, predicted Ron.
But as one door closes, another usually opens.
Ron said while the storefront will close, technological advances will now allow homes to be automated. The ability now exists for home TVs, audio, computers, fridges, stoves, lighting and heating to be centrally controlled.
"We're into that area now," said Ron, "we don't need a storefront for that but will be operating from a website, that's what our plans are."
Jack's Audio Video is located at 646 South Railway St. and is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday
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