Instant Replay (video series)

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.

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:
 * Video News
 * Video Art
 * Commercial Potential, consisting of commercials from other countries, not otherwise available in the U.S. at the time
 * Sports Spot, generally in the form of sports footage set to music, in the manner of proto-music videos
 * Illustrated Music, including David Bowie's "Space Oddity" set to NASA footage or Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" set against footage shot from a roller coaster
 * Did You Miss This?, consisting of "odds and ends from broadcast TV, HBO and elsewhere," such as "Saturday Night Live's Bill Murray popping a Polaroid flash on the Weekend Update set, thereby burning a hole in the sensitive lens of a $10,000 TV camera and giving viewers a brown spot on their screens for the rest of the show whenever that camera was used."
 * Technical Corner
 * Satellite News, focusing on home satellite dishes and including non-aired footage captured by hobbyists recording the continuous satellite feeds.
 * Segments featuring clips sent in by "correspondents"
 * Interviews, including with Jack Valenti, head of the Motion Picture Association of America; telecommunications mogul Ted Turner; television pioneer Vladimir Zworykin.

Editions
Two hours each unless otherwise indicated. Source:
 * Video Art Issue
 * Budokan video concert, Ron Hays' Odyssey, computer artist Saul Bernstein, 1980 Consumer Electronics Show, more, including "Technical Corner" with video artist Skip Sweeney on creating visuals using video feedback.


 * Video Music Issue
 * Billy Preston interview, segments featuring Devo and The Doors, more.


 * First Anniversary Issue
 * Ron Hays' Star Wars concert, Jack Valenti interview, reports on Magnavox videodisc player, backyard satellite dishes, and Anthony Quinn, more.


 * Flight Issue
 * Bob Hoover "video stuntride", Evel Knievel biography, Cliff Robertson interview on film The Pilot, more.


 * Funkausstellung Issue
 * Report from the Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin.


 * Special editions
 * International Air Race & Show (90 minutes)
 * Reports on stunt pilot Bob Hoover, author Martin Caidin, The Amazing Sonic Acrojets


 * C.E.S. 1979 (40 minutes)
 * C.E.S. 1980 (60 minutes)
 * Reports from the Consumer Electronics Show


 * Ecological Jazz Band (45 minutes)
 * Concert featuring band including Duffy Jackson of Count Basie's Orchestra and trumpeter Frankie Man.


 * SPTS '80 (60 minutes)
 * Report from the National Conference of Home Satellite Pioneers


 * 1980 Bacardi Speedboat Race (30 minutes)
 * Report from the Florida speedboat competition.


 * Madness Takes Its Toll (30 minutes)
 * Richard O'Brien interview, report from a The Rocky Horror Picture Show event.


 * Test Tape (running time n.a.)
 * Color bars, grids, crosshatches, patterns and other tools for testing VCR and TV quality


 * IR Sampler (running time n.a.)

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 as the Instant Replay Image Translator, that could play and record both US-format NTSC and international PAL-format videocassettes.