A modern new logo was added to the cover, and under the direction of a professional designer and production manager, the layout and art design were improved and updated. A far cry from the inaugural edition in January 1971 of 32 pages, each issue of SDM now approached 200 pages, sometimes greater.
And there were plenty of stories to fill the pages. Security endured the growing pains that all flourishing industries undergo: training, licensing, community relations, marketing, unfair competition. For example, a story in 1981 titled, “Cable Security Reaches for a Mass Market,” outlined how various cable providers across the United States were planning for a mass-market approach to home security installation and monitoring via their cable customer account base and cable television infrastructure. Further, SDM reported on new telecommunications legislation and the break-up of the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs), which would open the door for competition under David versus Goliath type circumstances.