Color broadcasting timeline

[KentTeffeteller]

Question for the brain trust. How well did the CBS Chromacoder work with the old CBS Field Sequential color cameras? Was it reliable? I did edit the earlier post. And yes, NBC heavily did subsidize color broadcasting to sell Color TV sets.

[Steve D.]

Here's a link to an earlier Chromacoder thread on VK in 2009: http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=236288

-Steve D.

[W.B.]

Originally Posted by John Hafer

OK, maybe this shows my age but I grew up in the 1950's. I have TV Guides from every year from 1953 to 1966 and a fall of 1956 issue showed CBS was colorcasting 4 shows per week. ABC started in the fall of 1962 (Flintstones, Jetsons and Sunday Movie Special). For the fall of 1963, ABC had Wagon Train, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Flintstones. For the fall of 1964, they regressed, Wagon Train went back to B&W and only Flinstones, Jonny Quest, and the Sunday Movie were in color with a some specials and a Sunday Golf program (filmed). The fall of 1965 was the start of both ABC and CBS regular colorcasting.

As far as Cinderella on CBS. It was taped at CBS (yes TK-41 cameras) and was originally colorcast on CBS on February 22, 1965. CBS also showed two rebroadcasts of Fred Astaire (originally from NBC from 1958 and 1959) in the winter/spring of 1965. I also remember CBS filmed a couple of Lassie episodes in color in the early 1960s.

I think part of the reason for CBS did not colorcast was that they did not have much color broadcast equipment. I have a TV Guide episode from 1964 that states CBS was installing over a million dollars of color equipment at their new broadcast center being built at the time.

Growing up in Syracuse NY, we did have more color in that our local CBS station had local color film equipment, as well as our local ABC and NBC stations, all by 1964.

I followed color broadcast progression from the late 1950s and we bought our first color TV in December 1963.

Hope this info helps.

I was reading old Broadcasting magazines on David Gleason's excellent World Radio History site, and their April 1965 issue (as well as the May 1965 issue of another magazine, BM/E) reported that CBS took delivery of its first General Electric 4-V film chain camera at their Broadcast Center in New York, and that more such cameras would be delivered there (for use both at CBS-TV network and WCBS-TV local) and to CBS Television City in Hollywood, up through the summer. This would have meant their first color film chains in operation at the onset of the 1965-66 season would have been PE-24's. Apparently they got a few more over the next year, by which time GE's model was the PE-240. So that meant CBS would have had both types of GE 4-V's. Evidently even with that, CBS was "anyone but RCA." Not just buying Norelco PC-60 and PC-70 cameras, or Marconi Mark VII's. From what I read, it was John Schneider (who'd replaced Jim Aubrey as CBS Television Network president in 1965) who pushed Paley to "go color." That three different companies made color equipment certainly made it easier for Paley to swallow the big switch.

Because of ABC's particular situation, they were anywhere and everywhere with color equipment. As far as film chains go, I know their Television Center in Hollywood had mostly RCA TK-26's, with a few 27's strewn in there. They had an outpost in Union City, NJ, to run film-based shows and network movies and microwave them to New York to circumvent an exhibition tax in place in NYC at the time; that facility had GE PE-24's. When their Television Center at 7 West 66th Street in New York equipped with color, they did so with RCA TK-27's (by 1980, some added TK-28's into the mix). Even their studio cameras - the last RCA TK-41C's ever made at the start, some Norelco PC-60's, a lot of PC-70's, GE PE-250's and 350's . . . their local stations were also all over the place, with (as of 1967):
- WABC-TV, KABC-TV - Norelco PC-70's
- WBKB (became WLS-TV in 1968) - GE PE-250's
- WXYZ-TV, KGO-TV - RCA TK-42's
(the latter replaced c.1969 with GE PE-350's, the former by 1973-74 with RCA TK-45A's)

I was surprised to read in a 1968 BM/E article that WNEW-TV in New York had GE 4-V film chains (presumably PE-24's put into service in 1965 to show color films, ads and cartoons), of which they had three, as opposed to seven B&W film chains from Sarkes Tarzian. I had been in touch on a message board devoted to New York radio with a former program manager for the station who suggested they also had RCA TK-27's; presumably they were purchased to replace some or all of the ST B&W chains? Of course, their color cameras, from 1966 to 1977, were Norelco PC-70's.

WOR-TV as of 1968 was equipped with GE PE-250 studio cameras, and four RCA TK-27 chains (two of which had been ordered and delivered some three years before).

Looking at old YouTube clips of local TV stations in terms of film and slide replications, can anyone spot whether the chain was GE or RCA?

[etype2]

NBC affiliate, WTMJ-TV channel 4 in Milwaukee from which I hale from 1946 through 1980, used RCA film chain equipment. The station was the third in the nation to originate local live color telecasting.

These two articles may be of interest.

https://visions4netjournal.com/wp-co...F-part-one.pdf

https://visions4netjournal.com/wp-co...F-Part-Two.pdf

[ceebee23]

An interesting article on how the first US Masters Golf came to be broadcast in color 1966.

Not the result of some long thought about CBS strategy but more a power play between CBS and Clifford Roberts, the Augusta National's Club Chairman ....

https://golf.com/news/masters-color-tv-broadcast-story/

History turns on personalities ...

[Penthode]

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

"...We made a antenna, then used a conical to pick up WJAC..."

What's a conical?

Phil Nelson

I didn't see anyone answer this.

A conical antenna was a popular and efficiently simple antenna used in the fifties. It derived from the early days of VHF reception in the 1930's and originally consisted of a dipole antenna with large solid metal cones. It was later simplified to form a cone using three protruding elements per cone with a reflector element added to the rear.