Publisher Chuck Azar Year founded 1977 | Founder Chuck Azar Final issue 1982 | |
Format VHS and Beta-format videocassette Company Instant Replay Video Magazine Inc. | ||
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.
Contents
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:
Editions
Two hours each unless otherwise indicated. Source:
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,
Although this is a concept that's now starting to gain widespread attention, the notion of a true magazine on videocassette is hardly new. More than a decade ago … Chuck Azar founded the form with Instant Replay, a one-hour [sic] magazine that provided information about the latest video equipment, along with tips and techniques for the home consumer. Issued sporadically, the video magazine was … way ahead of its time.
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 the Instant Replay Image Translator, that could play and record both US-format NTSC and international PAL-format videocassettes.