COSTA MESA

At the end of this month, Dan’s TV Service will fade out after 51 years in business. Dan and Jean McMillan opened the store in 1948 in a room in the back of Myrene’s Service Station at 17th Street and Newport Boulevard. Two years later, they built their own shop at 1566 Newport Blvd., where the store still stands. “We still have customers that we sold our first TVs to,” said Jean, who has mixed feelings about closing the business. Jean and her son, Dave, have run the business since the 1990 retirement of Dan, who died in May.

Though business slowed with the advent of discount warehouses, the McMillans entered the business during television’s heyday. The first RCA television was introduced to the public in 1939 at the cost of $660, more than half the price of a new car. It wasn’t until after World War II that production and sales picked up. In 1946, there were only 6,000 televisions in households across the U.S., but by 1951 that number had skyrocketed to 12 million.