Toast - Commodore Computers

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 634 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2024

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why did the best-selling computer manufacturer, Commodore, go bust?

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up? Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of brands which had promised so much to consumers.

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea. What did it promise? Why did it fail? What can we learn from it today?

In this episode, Sean examines the remarkable story behind the man who founded one of the world's best-selling computer manufacturers.

Commodore computers were huge in the 1980s so why couldn't the business adapt to survive in an age when computing became even more popular?

Expert commentators and employees reflect on why the company was so successful and what led to its demise.

Guests include David Pleasance - a former Commodore international executive and later joint managing director of its UK arm; Tim Danton - editor-in-chief of PC Pro magazine; Dan Wood - a Commodore computers enthusiast.

Alongside them is the self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, to analyse the missteps that changed the brand?s fortunes.

If you have an idea for a topic with a toast moment then you can email the programme at [email protected]

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in February. In the new series, Greg Foot will investigate more of the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Toast is produced by Jon Douglas and Viant Siddique and is a BBC Audio North production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
0:05.1	My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.
0:08.7	It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs,
0:13.5	moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
0:19.1	And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music
0:21.7	means we can tell those stories like no one else.
0:24.5	We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative.
0:28.6	So whether you want an insightful take on music right now
0:31.3	or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music,
0:36.1	check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:45.8	Hello and welcome to the BBC Radio 4 series Toast, where we look at what we can learn from those big business ideas that captured the imagination, only for them or the businesses behind them, to end up toast.
0:58.4	I'm Sean Farrington. With me is Sam White. Hello, Sam. Hello.
1:02.5	The business brain behind our little toast enterprise. How are you?
1:06.3	I'm good. How are you? I'm all right. I'm pumped for another investigation into what went wrong at something that once upon a time was so great.
1:15.0	We're going to hear from a few experts who know about this particular brand or product that we're looking at on the show today.
1:22.5	Sam doesn't know what we're about to discuss, but all round whiz that she is.
1:27.2	She'll have a listen in, ask a few
1:28.8	questions along the way, draw her own conclusions at the end. Right, let's get going. Now, we
1:35.6	like to hear from people who reveled in a product in its heyday. For this one, Sam, didn't have to
1:41.6	look too far. In fact, we only had to go as far as my mom's attic right let's go up
1:48.0	put your light on right oh chilly up here need a bit of lagging okay there's the Christmas tree what's that there's the Christmas treat. What's that? There's the Scalextric box.
	...

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