I find I'm noticing vintage radios as part of the set dressing in contemporary TV shows and movies.

Latest was a new movie seen yesterday, "Thanks for Sharing" (not everybody's taste) where one of the "heros" is a cool environmentalist New Yorker, not born before 1980, with a stylishly decorated apartment. In one shot you see some shelves with a cream/ivory bakelite radio - two knobs, maybe a standard AA5? On another shelf is an early vertical book-size transistor, possibly a Zenith of about 1958?

Clearly there are two markets for vintage radio - tech conservationists and style-conscious interior decorators. I'm fully in favour of stylish design, but I can't compete with the decorator market that will pay $4000 for a kitchen benchtop and see $500 for a stylish radio as peanuts.

Movie/TV sets are good barometers of contemporary style, so it looks like radios, at least the stylish bakelite models, may still be in fashion for a while.

Anybody else noticing vintage radios in contemporary movies or TV shows?

Maven

I often take note of radios and other electrical/electronic equipment in movies, but mainly those of the 40s and 50s when the gear itself was contemporary.

Check this thread for a screenshot from Prisoner showing a Mullard Meteor in the gaol laundry.

That's from an episode from 1979 and about as contemporary as I can think of at the moment. Other shows I know that had valve radios were Get Smart and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Another game is spotting anachronistic technology in "historical" dramas. The Miss Fisher Mysteries on ABC TV have a few radios popping up from the right period (1930s) - no bakelite, only wooden cases.

Some of the telephones in police stations and the like look too modern for the period - more like 1950s models.

In the first series, there was a scene when people were dancing to dixieland jazz on a gramophone. The music was right, and sounded like the appropriate 78 rpm platter, but the shot showed a plastic LP revolving at 33rpm with a microgroove pickup! About 25 years too early.

Maven

Here is a theatre review of "The Graduate", starring Jerry Hall, that is now playing in Melbourne. Check out the Kriesler 11-81 in the picture.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/entertainment/arts/stage-review-the-graduate-her-majesty8217s-theatre/story-fni0fcgk-1226727628981.

This is a scene from Star Trek (original series) "City on the edge of forever" which placed the captain and others in the 1930's.

Inside a radio repair shop.

Inside a radio repair shop.

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The recent Channel 7 series "A Place to Call Home" had valve radios in every second scene. In the hospital rooms, bedrooms, loungerooms, dining rooms, on front verandahs. I lost count of all the different radios and radiograms, there were quite a few AWA's.