Storefront Television Display

A Coincidental Broadcast or villainous message is about to air live on TV, but the hero isn't at home to view it. Maybe they're out of the house (and likely close to wherever the dramatic event is happening). Or maybe you just want some pure entertainment, but you're too poor to afford television. Whatever the case may be, everybody needs a way to view the television somehow. The answer? A storefront TV display!

Whenever a character passes by a small electronics store, there will be multiple televisions displayed in the store's front window, all playing the same program in synchrony with each other (rarely are they ever playing different programs from each other). The televisions can be heard outside the glass window by all. They're always playing the news, and occasionally some sort of entertainment (a character watching a movie in front of the storefront), even though in Real Life, TVs in a store would probably be turned off (or playing user guides).

Becoming a Discredited Trope as nowadays, electronic stores have the TVs locked up or in the back to prevent theft. Plus, the trope is normally used as a way to provide movies or news on the go, which is now easy to accomplish with smartphones, so this trope mostly pops up in works that were written or set before the early-to-mid 2010s.

May overlap with Doomed Supermarket Display if something is bound to happen to the TVs and/or Ominous Multiple Screens if it's Played for Horror.

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Examples:

Advertising

• An advertisement for Molson beer featuring the "I Am Canadian" song showed two passers-by watching a hockey game on a TV set in a window display.
• I Saw Your Willy: When running home from school after finding out everyone saw his willy, Alex stops in front of a storefront showing numerous television screens, only for a newscaster to appear on every one of the screens and announce, "Newsflash! The world sees Alex's willy!"

Anime & Manga

• In GTO: 14 Days in Shonan, Miko walks past a storefront of televisions playing an interview with Onizuka, where he names her as the person suspected of burning down the White Swan group home. It turns out to be a pre-recorded video broadcast to only those screens, as part of an elaborate Scare 'Em Straight plan.
• Kiki's Delivery Service: After Kiki saves Tombo from a blimp accident, we cut to the town crowd watching the live news broadcast in front of an appliance store, as a janitor brags to the crowd that she was using his broom.
• In Sonic X, during Dr. Eggman's first attack on Station Square, he hijacks every TV screen in the city to broadcast his Take Over the World plans, and there's a brief shot of some passersby watching the message in a storefront display. Later, Sonic learns about the attack after noticing a crowd of people watching a similar display and taking a peek over their shoulders.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Heero stops in front of a TV showing images from Earth, in the montage of images of the Gundam Boys taking place during his speech at a school.

Comic Books

• The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: The final chapter "The Richest Duck in the World" opens on Donald and his nephews watching a documentary on Scrooge McDuck on a TV display in a storefront.
• The Powerpuff Girls: Sedusa stages a reality TV show in Townsville (DC issue #44, "Drama-o-Rama") knowing that people will be so busy hamming for TV cameras that she can rob the city blind. A bank of TV screens in a store window has Sedusa on the screens giving the citizens the go-ahead. Another page has a wall of monitors on Sedusa's wall showing the citizens' misbehavior for the sake of being on TV.

Comic Strips

• One old Pugad Baboy strip has Bab and Tiny going to a store with a TV on display showcasing a movie. Bab remarks that the movie is long but interesting and asks Tiny if he wants to buy some popcorn.

Films — Animation

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2: After losing and humiliating himself at the Vesting Ceremony, Flint walks home and gets the idea to call Sam after seeing one of her weather broadcasts on a TV display. As he leaves a message, the TVs cut to a breaking news bulletin of Flint's humiliation at the ceremony, causing him to sigh and walk the rest of the way home.
• Daffy Duck's Quackbusters: While Daffy is trying to sell his wares on the sidewalk, he looks in a window and sees a TV news report about J. P. Cubish offering his fortune to the one who can make him laugh one more time before he dies. This was a modification of a scene from the short Daffy Dilly, in which Daffy listens to the news on a radio, but this wasn't 1948 anymore.
• Lilo & Stitch: Stitch happens to pass an appliance store with a TV set in the front window. The set is showing an old B-movie: Earth vs. the Spider. Stitch later constructs a scale model of San Francisco in Lilo's room just so that he can go all Gojira on it. Lilo glumly notes, "No more caffeine for you."
• Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas: A Deleted Scene from "Mickey's Dog-Gone Christmas" has Mickey pasting a "lost dog" flyer in front of an in-store TV camera so that it can be seen on every display in the store.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie: While the girls are trying to walk home in the rain, they stop at a storefront with multiple TV screens showing news reports about the destruction they caused with their game of tag.
• A magical variant shows up in Shrek Forever After, where the store in question is a mirror shop, where the Magic Mirror broadcasts Rumpelstiltskin's Deal of a Lifetime in exchange for Shrek.
• Towards the end of Sing where all of the main characters are performing, a crowd of animals are seen watching Rosita and Gunter's performance on multiple TV screens in a storefront. One of them is Mike, who, goaded by the audience's reaction, goes back to show them what real singing is.
• Tweety's High Flying Adventure from 2000 has Tweety Pie attempt to circle the globe in eighty days or less, and gather eighty feline pawprints en route. Lola Bunny conducts a newscast that's seen on TV sets in a store's display window by an audience of cats. She reports that Tweety has advanced to Rome, Italy, and has gathered 37 pawprints so far.

Films — Live-Action

• Across the Universe (2007) is set in the 1960s and features a scene with Jude watching a national TV broadcast about the Vietnam war at a storefront of a TV repair shop. Later he sees the announcement that Martin Luther King was assassinated the same way.
• Brazil opens with a zoom out from a storefront with multiple screens.
• Played with in Being There. "Chance" is an older man who was forced out of his home which he had never, ever left before. He viewed the world through television since he had a LOT of them at home. When walking past a store with multiple TVs in the window, he is totally puzzled at seeing himself on one of them, thanks to a camera pointed to the sidewalk. He responds by using the remote control he had with him to change the channel; nothing happens, though it does cycle the channels on one of the other sets.
• In Biutiful, Uxbal walks by a storefront with multiple television screens◊ showing images of a whale washed up onshore.
• Eddie and the Cruisers: The finale of the film features such a storefront window. And then we're shown the man watching the screen, the supposedly deceased Eddie Wilson.
• Played for laughs in Forrest Gump: Not too long after young Forrest teaches Elvis what becomes the singer's signature hip-swinging moves, Forrest and his Momma are walking past an appliance store & see Elvis performing on one of the tv sets in the window. Momma covers Forrest's eyes with her hand, saying such a thing isn't fit for children to see.
• In Goodbye Lenin, Alex and his co-workers watch Erich Honecker's resignation speech on several televisions in the TV repair shop they work in.
• Early on in Hancock, the titular hero learns of a freeway police chase scene from watching the news on a screen in a store front.
• Harry and the Butler: Harry can't afford a TV, so when he wants to watch a concert, he takes a folding chair to the storefront display of a TV store, where he sits and watches from the sidewalk.
• Jumanji: After escaping the game the monkeys stop in front of an electronics store to watch The Wizard of Oz in the display. They then start jumping around like the flying monkeys before deciding to loot the store.
• In King Ralph, a group of punks watch first the collective funeral procession of the Royal Family, and then later on in the film watch Ralph's abdication speech.
• Never Look Away: Kurt and Ellie, who have just defected from East Germany to the west in 1961, goggle as they watch a West German lottery drawing on the televisions in a storefront window. It's an example of the availability of Western consumer goods, but Kurt later draws a connection between lottery numbers and how random elements gain meaning in art.
• The Policeman: Avraham is walking his beat when he stops in front of a storefront television display, and watches cops in riot gear attacking a mob. Avraham shows obvious admiration for the kind of ass-kicking police work that he himself, being a kind and gentle soul, isn't capable of.
• RoboCop: When Clarence Boddicker gives his men the new Cobra assault guns provided by Dick Jones before they head to the steel mill to kill RoboCop, they're hanging out near a store with TVs in the window showing a popular program. That storefront is the first thing Emil blasts with his new toy.
• Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird: After Big Bird runs away from the Dodos' home to return to Sesame Street, he catches a news report about it in a storefront, particularly the part where Miss Finch vows to hunt him down.
• In Slumdog Millionaire there are a few scenes where people too poor to afford a TV watch the show in front of an electronics store.
• Spartan: At the end of the film, a disguised Bobby watches a television display in an unknown city, and the televisions are showing the news that the President's daughter has come home safely after Bobby rescued her and got her to safety.
• Not really in the storefront but in Splash, after losing her in the department store, Allen finds Madison transfixed by all the TVs on display. (It's also from those TVs that she learns how to speak English.)
• They Live!: The protagonist passes a TV display that shows his picture, now the target of a manhunt following his shooting spree in a department store (don't worry, the victims weren't exactly human).
• Threads: Just before the nuclear attack, there's a shot of the window display in an electronics store with all the televisions showing one of the Protect and Survive films.
• The Unjust: The Seoul serial killer story is shown to be huge news by, among other things, all the TVs on display in a store playing a news report about it.
• In Wicker Park, the hero falls in love with the image of a girl he sees displayed on multiple screens inside a TV repair shop.

Literature

• Peregrine Piecrust: In the book Square Eyes, a boy called Peregrine is totally addicted to television, to the extent that he tries to watch TV wherever he goes, including TV displays in shop windows. This goes on until he gets square eyes from watching too much television.
• The Simpsons Guide to Springfield (a book on the series themed around a travel guide for Springfield) includes a listing for Springfield TV Store. The entry seems to imply that the store's only purpose is to display televisions in the front window so people can watch news bulletins on them and react accordingly.

Live-Action TV

• Are You Being Served?: In the episode "Closed Circuit," Grace Brothers decides to install televisions and use them to advertise the store's products and special offers. Miss Brahms is filmed for the store's first commercial with Mr. Grace's nurse reading the lines in voiceover since they thought her husky contralto would sound more appealing than Miss Brahms' nasally cockney accent. Not long after the commercial starts airing in the storefront, Miss Brahms is asked out on a date by a young Lord who explains that he saw the commercial while he was passing by the store and was instantly smitten with her and (what he thinks is) her sexy voice, setting the main plot of the episode in motion.
• Barney Miller: Discussed Trope in Season 6 episode "Guns". Luger, the endlessly maudlin bore, says that his old Dumont TV finally broke^note Even in 1980 that would have been a very old TV, but that the next time he wants to watch a show he can just "stand on the sidewalk and watch it through the window of an appliance store."
• Castle: "Always Buy Retail". When Castle and Beckett are looking for clues about a murder suspect on Canal Street, Castle notices a display like this across from the bodega where their victim worked. It gives us the signature scene where Castle briefly admires his face on the screen from the camera mounted in the window, saying "I really am ruggedly handsome, aren't I?" before pointing out to Beckett that their killer would have been caught on the same camera.
• CSI: NY: In the opening sequence of "Right Next Door," the first Victim of the Week stops in front of an appliance store to freshen her lipstick via her reflection in the window. As she does so, an Amber Alert for a missing little girl is playing at volume on one of the tv sets. The episode ends with Stella walking past the same store while the report of a missing boy being reunited with his mother plays.
• In Mindhunter, several sequences are shown of the FBI's progress on a group of 70s-style wood-paneled TV sets in a storefront.
• Mr. Bean: Just before the closing credits of Mr. Bean Goes to Town, an entire window display of televisions goes fuzzy when he passes, in a reference to earlier in the episode, when his television at home would do the same thing.
• One of Saturday Night Live's TV Funhouse cartoons has Jesus reappear and walk down a modern street, stopping in front of a TV store to see what's on. He quickly gets fed up with bad Christmas specials and corrupt televangelists, and uses his divine powers to change the channels on all the TVs at once until he finds something he likes.
• The Umbrella Academy: This is how Viktor finds out about his father's death.

Music Videos

• The music video for David Bowie's 2017 posthumous single "No Plan" depicts a group of people gathering around a storefront full of TVs, watching a broadcast displaying the song's lyrics and imagery related to them. The use of this imagery nods back to Bowie's role in The Man Who Fell to Earth, in which his extraterrestrial character habitually watched multiple TV sets simultaneously to figure out Earth's various goings-on.

Video Games

• Part of the main premise of Persona 4. The mega-store Junes owned by the family of one of your playable characters, Yosuke, has a large display of fancy flat-screen televisions. Your unnamed main character is trying to explain about how he got sucked into the TV he has at home as part of something called the "Midnight Channel." When Yosuke doesn't believe him, he pokes his hand through one of the TVs to demonstrate and it works. He then puts his head through and isn't long before he, Yosuke and their friend Chie have all fallen inside the TV world.
• Saints Row 2: A particular electronics store in Stilwater has a number of TV screens on its storefront, and the Boss just happens to be walking by when the local channel broadcasts the news of several members of a rival gang being released from prison.
• Red Alert 3: The Emperor's broadcast to the world is shown in this way, to various amounts of interest to passersby.
• In Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman's demonstration of the Eclipse Cannon is briefly shown being displayed on a storefront full of TVs, with several horrified passersby looking on, establishing that he has hijacked every TV in Central City.
• Untitled Goose Game has a small shop like this.
• The Walking Dead: Season One: In Episode one, Lee and Doug are trying to find a way across a zombie-infested street, when they spot a TV store with several TV sets in the window on the opposite side from them. Doug uses a universal remote control to set the TVs to display static, creating a light show that distracts some of the zombies.

Western Animation

• American Dad!:
  • In "100 A.D.", Stan announces live on the news that he is offering $50,000 to anyone who can stop the marriage between his daughter Hayley and Jeff Fischer. Multiple characters of Langley Falls are viewing this broadcast, one of them being a homeless man watching a storefront's television screens.
  • In "An Incident at Owl Creek", after Stan humiliates himself by pooping in the neighbors' pool, he drives to work the next day and stops at a stoplight next to an electronics store where a crowd has gathered to watch the TV display. The TVs start showing a news report about Stan's accident, then someone in the crowd spots Stan and the whole crowd starts laughing at him.
• Arthur: In That's a Baby Show! Arthur & Buster are walking home from school when Buster stops outside a TV shop when he notices Love Ducks playing on all of the storefront TVs. He goes inside to hear the show and every TV in the shop is playing the show with the volume at full blast, which gets him interested in the show.
• Goof Troop: In "Close Encounters of the Weird Mime", Max and P.J. hijack the local TV signal and send out a fake message that aliens are coming to invade the earth. A panicked crowd watches their broadcast on a storefront display, and then see Goofy about to go into his street-corner mime act, with a costume that looks oddly identical to the boys' alien disguises.
• Gravity Falls: In "Soos and the Real Girl", Soos' video game girlfriend .GIFfany starts stalking him outside the game. When Soos has trouble talking to real women at the mall, .GIFfany appears on the TVs in an electronics store display to comfort him, eventually appearing on all the TV screens at once to appear large and intimidating as she tells Soos that they can be together forever.
• Phineas and Ferb:
  • In "The Flying Fishmonger" while Candace is out shopping with Linda, Lawrence, and Winifred, she passes a storefront TV and witnesses the ad promoting the jump of the Flying Fishmonger over the gorge in the Flynn-Fletcher backyard. Candace brings Linda back to see, but right when she does so, it quickly switches to another ad promoting pore paste, to which Linda comments Candace's pores aren't that big.
  • In "A Phineas and Ferb Family Christmas", Candace calls Linda, who happens to be near a set of TVs in a storefront, which is broadcasting the Christmas in July special the boys are hosting. Right when Linda turns to look at the TV, it immediately goes right to commercial and shows the Wintobreath toothpaste the show is promoting, which reminds Linda she needs to pick up toothpaste and ends the call.
• The Ren & Stimpy Show: In "Hard Times for Haggis", Haggis McHaggis sees a crowd of people laughing at a bunch of TVs in a window, and he thinks they're watching his show. He then learns, to his utter fury, that they're actually watching Ren & Stimpy.
• The Simpsons: The title sequence for Season 1 has Bart skating past a storefront with TV screens showing the image of Krusty the Clown.
• South Park: Tele's is an electronics store on the main street of the town. The front window typically displays several televisions, which usually are seen playing something that relates to the plot of an episode.
  • In one episode, the boys are being chased by Death, and he stops pursuing momentarily to watch Terrance and Philip in one of these.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • In "Have You Seen This Snail?", during the song "Gary Come Home", Spongebob appears on multiple televisions in a storefront and calls for Gary.
  • A radio variant in "Sing A Song Of Patrick". When Patrick's song is being played on the radio and everyone in Bikini Bottom goes on a rampage, one of the fish listens by walking by a radio store with a single radio at the storefront playing his song. The fish screams and runs away.
  • In the episode "Karate Star", Patrick is on an uncontrollable karate-chopping rampage and is chopping down the Barg-N-Mart. He chops down a giant screen TV that is broadcasting a news report about him, and then chops down an even "gianter" TV! They're not in the storefront but rather in the aisles.
  • In "Whelk Attack", right as SpongeBob and Patrick wonder what are the creatures that attacked the city, a news program on storefront TVs that happen to be right beside them reports that the city is attacked by whelks.
• Time Squad: In "Big Al's Big Secret", the gang goes on a mission to find Albert Einstein. Otto discovers Einstein's become a zany used-car salesman when he sees a Kitschy Local Commercial for "Big Al's Car Barn" in a window display of televisions.
• Tiny Toon Adventures:
  • "Two-Tone Town" uses this at both its beginning and end. In the beginning, Buster and Babs are seen looking at the storefront televisions when Warner Bros. announces auditions for its next animated series, ACME Oop!. Buster considers auditioning because he's worried that ACME Oop! will replace Tiny Toons in its time slot, resulting in Tiny Toons getting cancelled and he and Babs having to get jobs as has-beens on Toonywood Squares. At the end of the episode, Buster and Babs are looking at the storefront televisions when they find out that what Buster said earlier had become true when Babs helped obscure Warner Bros. stars Foxy, Roxy, Goopy Geer, and Big Bee get lead parts on ACME Oop! when they were previously all down on their luck.
  • In "Washingtoon", Buster and Babs come to a display of storefront televisions when Plucky's new educational television show, Learn-O-Rama has hit the airwaves, meaning that with his help, the Adult Coalition Against Funny Cartoons chairperson has managed to drain all the tooniness from ACME Acres.
• In the Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum episode "I Am Neil Armstrong", the gang gets to see Neil Armstrong land on the moon via televisions displayed in a storefront.

Real Life

• There was a prank that involved such displays, where a universal remote is used to mess with them in some manner, usually by turning the volume up.

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