Great Service - Great Sets

Great Service, Great Sets
That's what you get from Granada

Do you remember that Granada TV Rental advert in the late 1970s? It showed the Granada TV Rental dealer entering a home and the family inside sitting down to watch their rental TV.

In the early eighties, Granada TV Rental brought out a new version. By then, domestic VCRs were beginning to penetrate the market. In fact it was at the time of the unforgettable VHS - Beta format war, and we all know which won, don't we? Not surprisingly, the new version featured VCRs as well as TVs. The advert began like this:

There's a world of TV
Lots of videos to see at Granada.

And after a bit of chat, the next bit of singing was:

With low rentals too...
There's a package for you at Granada

Does anyone else remember the remaining two lines of the song which I've half forgotten?

Finally the slogan went

WIDE CHOICE
LOW RENTALS

Those words were spoken, and also appeared on the screen, as the dealer entered the customer's home. Also they finished off by speaking (although not shown on screen) "That's Granada".

Where was your nearest Granada TV Rental shop? Our nearest was Middle Street, Yeovil, Somerset, but we never rented a TV from them.

Did you (or your parents) ever rent a TV or VCR from Granada TV Rental? How did you rate their service at the time?

Why do you only ever appear on TV Forum at the weekend? Just curious.

I had a 14" colour 'portable' from Granada for donkeys years. Bloody good it was too. Bought it second (or even third) hand for about £65 in 1990 or so, and it lasted until a housemove a couple of years ago when it got dropped.

Did Granada actually make their own kit or were they re-badged versions from a mainstream manufacturer?

probably got bored watching Granada Reports on his rented Granada television.

he could always go for a weekend drive in his Ford Granada, maybe pop up to Mancherster and visit Granada studios

Yep, and stop for a break at a Granada motorway service station along the way!

That last point is a joke. I don't think there are any Granada motorway service stations at all now, many of them (if not all) were rebranded MOTO about 5 years or so ago now.

No, I'm not from the Granada TV region at all, I'm NOT renting a Granada television, and I don't have a car at all (in fact I can't even drive). I can tell you're winding me up.

Maybe if you wrote out the sound of the jingle for us, it would help...

its that kind of astuteness that won the war.

We had one in Bloxwich.

It's now a chippy!!

me, wind somebody up, never in a million years



maybe that's why the MOD have called their latest nuclear sub Astute



can't honestly remember what brand of TV's we had only that the first was black and white and the second was colour.

remember the add though, great service, great sets, yes Granada TV do a great service and their sets are great, so realistic you'd think that self contained breeze block shell on coronation street was a row of terrace houses

I knew someone who had a Granada TV & Granada top load VCR up until three years ago, he had rented it for so long that in the end they gave him outright ownership of it

probably because he'd paid for it about 4 times over

Most of them were sourced from Akai and JVC in the latter years -- hence the reason they were reliable. Japanese electronics of the 70s and 80s were utterly unburstable -- which most people, our family included, just didn't seem to get. While our Ferguson Colourstar went through 3 tubes before being ditched at 12 years old, a friend of mine had a 1974 Sanyo 20" TV in 1997, still with a perfect picture. May well still be going strong now. The cars were the same -- while our Fords, Talbots and Peugeots wheezed and coughed in the cold weather every flippin year, there was the next door neighbour's Datsuns and Toyotas starting first turn of the key, come hail or high water. Hence the reason I tend to buy Japanese to this day.

Of course, all the tellies are made in bloody Turkey now, no matter whose name is on the front....