oscar in color?
 

It is Oscar season .... but when were the Oscars first shown in color..did NBC show them in color during the 50s or did Oscar have to wait until the 60s to be shown in glorious NTSC color?

And if any of you watched Sunday's broadcast... did you watch it on your 60" plasma or your favourite roundie?

'66 or '67, wasn't it?

1966 :yes:

I knew that it was 1966, but why so late?

The Oscar statuettes were colored light blue instead of gold color before 1966, and nobody wanted that fact to be known. In B&W, it would look the same. :D

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(I'm just joking here! :D

http://www.geocities.com/wa2ise/radios/bluebananas.gif

There was a somewhat related story dating back to the development days of NTSC. In a studio, there was a prototype NTSC TV camera, and a bowl of fruit. Some joker took the bananas and spray painted them a light blue color (which would be the hue of banana color 180 degrees out of phase). The person at a receiving lab couldn't understand why he couldn't get all the fruit to come out with the right colors. He'd set the hue to get the bananas "right" but the apples and oranges and such came out wrong...

Alex Magoun made a presentation about this at the first Early Television Convention.

The telecasts were always on ABC, weren't they? If I remember correctly, that would explain it...

Hey Steve,

Here's Wikipedia's take on the Academy Awards TV history: "The Awards show was first televised on NBC in 1953. NBC continued to broadcast the event until 1960 when the ABC Network took over, televising the festivities through 1970, after which NBC resumed the broadcasts. ABC once again took over broadcast duties in 1976; it is under contract to do so through the year 2014."

-Steve D.

There ya go. ABC didn't even broadcast anything in color until 1962 and that was just 1/2 hour a week (Jetsons, wasn't it?)

Steve,

You are correct. The Jetsons was ABC-TV's first color series airing September 23, 1962. The Flintstones first color episode aired several days later on Sept. 28, 1962. The Flintstones had been telecast in B&W on ABC since 1960 even though it had been filmed in color. ABC did not have color film facilities until 1962.

-Steve D.

And ABC had no actual color cameras until 1965, right Steve-O?

Right Steve. 1965 was the year ABC-TV originated live color broadcasts. I will defer to Ed Reitan's color tv history site for the details. Early Color Television Studio Facilities
http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/studios.html

-Steve D.