TV AND NOT TV

Well before channel surfing was a glint in an engineer's eye, Zenith was a power to be reckoned with. The U.S. brand whose name suggests the summit of aspiration was born on a Chicago kitchen table in 1918, when two wireless-radio buffs turned out equipment for other amateurs. In the 1940s, Zenith went into making TV sets in a big way, and in 1956 it introduced the parents -- or grandparents -- of today's couch potatoes to the idea of remote control with its Space Command device.

Unfortunately, this electronics pioneer is also an industry leader in losing money. Last week, as the company prepared to report another quarterly loss outstripping its entire 1994 deficit of $14.2 million, the last U.S.-owned firm that still makes TV sets (albeit in Mexico) signed a deal under which it will become a subsidiary of South Korea's LG Electronics. The LG Group, formerly Lucky-Goldstar, thus became South Korea's first conglomerate to establish a major beachhead in American consumer electronics. The firm, whose TV sets captured just 1.7% of the U.S. market last year, could hardly contain its glee, issuing a statement that the $351 million acquisition catapulted it into "the same league as other top-class makers."

What about American pride? "The only downside is the sentimental loss," says David Lachenbruch, editorial director of New York-based Television Digest. "But this is a worldwide market. People don't know where their TV sets come from. Their picture tube may come from the U.S., the circuit board may be from Malaysia, the transistors may come from Japan, and the set may have been assembled in Mexico. Consumers won't notice much difference from this deal." They're probably too spaced out by that Zenith invention, the remote control.