Hey, sorry if I'm a little late to the thread, but I get why PS was originally peeved by this commercial.

Back in the day, RS offered some very high quality high fi-fi equipment. They were a real player. Now they have no hi-fi offerings with only bargain basement stereo equipment available. RS current position regarding hi-fi is analogous to when Ford put a four cylinder engine in the Mustang. It upset alot of enthusiasts. Even if Ford had to retool the entire line for the sake of fuel economy or sales or whatever, you don't mess with the flagship. Leave the aspirational models alone.

RS equivalent, IMHO, was the Mach 1 paired with a sweet receiver. It would not have been difficult for RS to have always maintained a benchmark flagship product pairing like that. Not much floor space would be required in a store that already wastes alot of floor space. It would do wonders for customer loyalty to know that there would always be an affordable flagship hi-fi set up available at RS regardless of what was going on in the rest of the store. Sure, each store might sell less than a half dozen a year, if that. But at least hi-fi could be available to the 10s of millions of Americans that only have a RS or Wal-mart available when it comes to these things.