Radio Rentals started life in Boyces Street,
Brighton, Sussex, England. As well as renting radio receiving sets, it also guaranteed their service and maintenance. It was the first such business in the United Kingdom. Turnover in the first year was £780 (). A
limited company, Radio Rentals Limited, was incorporated on 19 August 1933 and by 1936 had shown rapid growth, becoming the largest such organisation in Great Britain, adding 12,000 subscribers in 1935-36 and covering almost the whole of the
home counties, the
Midlands and the South of England. At the time, the company's headquarters were at 92
Regent Street in London and had branch offices and showrooms in Birmingham, Brighton, Canterbury, Croydon, Southampton and Southend-on-Sea. A maintenance and services depot was in
Kennington. The radio receiving sets were made by
E. K. Cole Limited. Radio Rentals operated mainly in the UK, but opened an Australian branch in Sydney in 1937. In the 1960s, the group expanded into Italy with Telenoleggio. The growth of
BBC Television and then
ITV after the
Second World War encouraged more people to want TV sets, but they were expensive, creating an opportunity for Radio Rentals and its competitors to offer them at a monthly rental price which was much more affordable. By 1959 all Radio Rentals sets were made by a subsidiary company, Mains Radio Gramophone, based in Bradford. In October 1960, Radio Rentals acquired the
Baird Company and in December 1960, Mains Radio Gramophone changed its name to Baird Television. Radio Rentals acquired Recordacall in 1962, a company renting
telephone answering equipment, which started to be made by Baird Television. In October 1962, the group acquired Dawes Radio Group. In 1964, Radio Rentals merged with Rentaset (previously known as Relay Exchanges), Joseph Robinson's similar company, which also owned
Goodmans, bringing the group's outlets to 750 and assets to £55 million. Founder-chairman and managing director Perring-Thoms died in July 1964. Robinson later became chairman of the combined group. By 1968, Radio Rentals was the largest television rental group in Great Britain with 1.6 million subscribers. Vista Home Rentals, a rental company based in Scotland, was acquired in March 1966. With the coming of colour services, initially only on
BBC2, a further opportunity for renting was created. In 1968, Radio Rentals was acquired for £155 million by
Thorn Electrical Industries, who were the second largest television rental group in Great Britain with one million subscribers, giving the merged company one third of the market and 1,300 rental outlets. By the time the government approved the merger, the value of the bid had increased to £180 million. Radio Rentals joined with Thorn's Domestic Electrical Rentals (DER) chain as part of Thorn Television Rentals (TTR), though the two companies were run completely separately, with different staff and vehicles. On 15 November 1969 colour broadcasts on both
BBC channels and the
ITV network became available from the main transmitter sites around the UK. This led to a boom in rentals of TV sets. One other, smaller High Street TV rental companies was also acquired/established by the Thorn Television Rentals group: Multi-Broadcast. The last Baird TV models that were supplied by Radio Rentals to contain a genuine Baird (rather than a Thorn)-manufactured chassis was the dual-standard (405 and 625-line) 710 series. Legend has it that in the 1970s, Radio Rentals was the only TV rental company under the TTR umbrella who were allowed to produce full (from floor to waist) height cabinets on castors. The other companies had to use more squat cabinets placed on stands. By the late 1970s videorecorders had appeared on the market, but at first they were expensive. Only 5% of UK households had videorecorders in 1980. Radio Rentals elected to offer Baird branded
JVC VHS machines from 1977 onwards. In 1980 TTR, and thus Radio Rentals, became part of the merged
Thorn EMI. With the advent of satellite broadcasting in the 1980s Radio Rentals offered a range of equipment for rent, enabling more viewers to watch both
Sky Television services and
British Satellite Broadcasting services (these broadcasters later merged to form
British Sky Broadcasting). Radio Rentals also offered a small range of
white goods, starting with refrigerators in 1960. In later years, these white goods were mainly from Philips/Whirlpool. The urge to rent instead of buy reduced as domestic electronics became cheaper and more reliable, with greater use of
integrated circuits and improved design. The company went through many restructurings, shedding staff and rebranding itself. In common with other rental brands, it could not sustain a viable
business model and ceased to trade, merging with
Granada Limited's rental arm in 2000 to form
Boxclever. ==Oceania==