Color broadcasting timeline

[David Roper]

I wasn't aware of the AB colorcasts. I wonder how many stations that carried it were actually capable of color at the time...?

CBS had sets to sell in 1954 just as RCA/NBC did, so they were a player in the early NTSC period despite still smarting from their own color system's stillbirth. The Eye had big plans that fall for colorcasts of many shows, both filmed and live, but ultimately the only CBS series that filmed a color episode that season was Burns and Allen. All the rest were live colorcasts via field sequential cameras using a Rube Goldberg invention known as the Chromacorder for conversion to NTSC. After the Chromacoder was retired CBS' color broadcasts were sporadic at best for the next ten years.

It was actually ABC's growing interest in color that spurred CBS on in the fall of '65. In addition to The Jetsons, ABC had been broadcasting The Flintstones and Wagon Train in color in the early 60s. The combination of the sharp growth in color set ownership and a desire not to be the odd man out led CBS to outdo ABC in total number of color hours for 1965-66 despite virtually starting from square one.

As far as my local affiliates, I know that NBC affiliate WOOD was equipped for color literally from the very start (and I still hold out hope for 15" treasures that might be lurking in area basements). The CBS station, which went on the air in 1950, is claimed to only have begun broadcasting in color in 1968, but I found some information that refers specifically to local color film capability as of that time; I am certain network shows were being carried in color a good while prior to that. The area got its third channel--an ABC affiliate--in 1962, initially all black & white but my elders' reminiscences of Batman and Ozzie & Harriet in color confirm that it was so equipped no later than early 1966.