Just reading more on the early days of NTSC color...and with the Rose Bowl coming up ...makes me think that perhaps CBS failed to market its color system well enough.... a few really high profile football or baseball matches may have helped ?? or was it really the lack of sets out there???

or was it really the CBS board was not really fussed in the end ...having made its point... and delayed RCA's plans?

I am not sure of the long distance cable/transmission issues, if any, with CBS FS color for coast to coast hookups.

But I am sure a Rose Bowl or similar in color shown in NY would have sparked interest as it did for RCA!

CeeBee

CBS did broadcast a fair amount of FS color telecasts in 1951. This included several college football games. Of course no one who owned a b&w set could watch them. CBS & set maker CBS Columbia placed many full page ads in major eastern and midwestern newspapers promoting their color sets. No sale! was the reply from consumers. Here's some more info on CBS FS color woes from the Wakipedia information site:

After a series of hearings beginning in September 1949, the FCC found the RCA and CTI systems fraught with technical problems, inaccurate color reproduction, and expensive equipment, and so formally approved the CBS system as the U.S. color broadcasting standard on October 11, 1950. An unsuccessful lawsuit by RCA delayed the world's first network color broadcast until June 25, 1951, when a musical variety special titled simply Premiere was shown over a network of five east coast CBS affiliates. Viewership was again extremely limited: the program could not be seen on black and white sets, and Variety estimated that only thirty prototype color receivers were available in the New York area. Regular color broadcasts began that same week with the daytime series The World Is Yours and Modern Homemakers.
While the CBS color broadcasting schedule gradually expanded to twelve hours per week (but never into prime time), and the color network expanded to eleven affiliates as far west as Chicago, its commercial success was doomed by the lack of color receivers necessary to watch the programs, the refusal of television manufacturers to create adaptor mechanisms for their existing black and white sets, and the unwillingness of advertisers to sponsor broadcasts seen by almost no one. In desperation, CBS bought a television manufacturer, and on September 20, 1951, production began on the first and only CBS color television model. But it was too little, too late. Only 200 sets had been shipped, and only 100 sold, when CBS pulled the plug on its color television system on October 20, 1951, and bought back all the CBS color sets it could to prevent law suits by disappointed customers.

Best,
-Steve D.