Color broadcasting timeline

[holmesuser01]

Originally Posted by W.B.

The thing that finally tipped CBS to going color, by all accounts, was when Philips first developed the Plumbicon tube and introduced the Norelco PC-60 color studio camera in 1964-65. Here, the network could go color without giving any aid to the "hated" rival RCA which owned NBC. It was precisely because of this rivalry that, from the time CBS's own incompatible "field sequential" color system crashed and burned in 1951 up to that point, CBS only grudgingly and very sparingly, from 1954 through 1959, mounted occasional color productions - and, from 1959 through '65, hardly any (except for those colorcasts from early 1965 that were mentioned).

It was also in relation to CBS's "anybody but RCA" equipment replacement policy, that when the antiquated RCA TK-26 film chains (acquired in the mid-to-late 1950's and used for very infrequent color showings such as annual airings of The Wizard of Oz) came up for replacement in 1965-66, the "Eye Network" went with the General Electric PE-240 chains for their New York Broadcast Center and Hollywood Television City outposts. (Just can't tell whether it was the PE-240-A or PE-240-B variant - which of those two had the rounded, curved edges on the camera heads, as seen not only on Dennis Degan's photos from 1978, but also pics taken in the mid-to-late 1960's by Gordon Laubach seen here (alt. link here)?

Thank you, sir, for the link to those images. That really takes me back.