P.M. BRIEFING : Sony Retools VW Plant for TVs

Sony Corp. said today it will assemble color televisions at a large-screen TV tube factory being built in a former Volkswagen plant near Pittsburgh.

The television and tube production operations are expected to employ about 1,800 by late 1995, said Masaaki Morita, chairman of Sony Corp. of America and deputy president of Sony Corp., which is based in Japan.

Last April, Sony announced it would produce cathode ray tubes for televisions at the site, and the company decided recently to produce TV sets there as well.

Sony initially will invest $70 million in the television manufacturing operations, Morita said. The Pennsylvania factory will become Sony’s second television manufacturing plant in the United States. It already has a facility in San Diego.