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The First Robotic Overhead Camera…NBC’s “Home” Show

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

The First Robotic Overhead Camera…NBC’s “Home” Show

Now, this is BIG! So, big you can hardly see the RCA TK11 mounted in this massive contraption. By comparison, this dwarfs a studio crane boom arm, that may have served the same purpose.

The video here is shot from overhead camera and WOW…wait till you see the 3 camera ballet with RCA TK11s on the studio floor! 

“Home” (1954-1957) was broadcast from NBC’s 67th Street Studios at 101 W. 67th, which was being leased from WOR. This facility was built in 1949 as WOR’s 9 Television Square building, but mergers called for their studios to move to the Empire State Bldg in early ’54.

NBC was looking for a home for “Home” and this place had the space for an innovative state in the round, with the kind of informal staging that “Today” enjoyed. -Bobby Ellerbee

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14 responses to “The First Robotic Overhead Camera…NBC’s “Home” Show”

  1. Bob Sewvello

    Hugh Downs has some interesting things to say about all this during his Emmy Legends interview.

  2. Kevin West

    I spent a number of years in that space.
    It became ABC’s TV-18 and TV-19. All my Children was taped there for years. Until it was moved to the renovated TV-23, at 320 W. 66.
    It was a casualty of Capital Cities buying ABC, and wanting to sell off the real estate.

  3. Anthony DiFlorio III

  4. Anthony DiFlorio III

    TV Guide 5/7/54

  5. Anthony DiFlorio III

    TV Guide 5/7/54

  6. Anthony DiFlorio III

    From TV Guide 1954

  7. James Murphy Tinsley

    Here is another angle. I wonder if you also had to be in the International Back Hoe Operator’s Union to run it?

  8. Robert Barker

    That looks unnecessarily dangerous. Were there ever any mishaps?

  9. Steve Dichter

    FYI: Sept. 1955 TV Guide. Other than Howdy Doody, “Home” was the only show in color on this Tuesday.

  10. Dennis Degan

    ‘Home’ was never seen in some markets. NBC aired it on the network after the Today Show, and a number of stations chose not to carry it because they aired their own local ‘Today’-like show at 9am. I grew up in Atlanta where the NBC affiliate was WSB-TV. As far as I can recall, ‘Home’ never aired in Atlanta as WSB carried ‘Today In Georgia’ at that time.

  11. Gary Walters

    Interesting that the other 3 cameras in the photo have no NBC chimes on their sides.

  12. Alfred Robert Hogan

    Thanks for the neat photo and info — Home is often forgotten, somewhat understandably, compared with NBC’s Today, Tonight, and even Tomorrow programs. Am I correct in assuming Home always aired live, at least to the East and Midwest interconnected stations? I suppose they could have done another live version for Mountain and Pacific, or air shipped kinescopes overnight. AK and HI were just getting TV around that era and probably were lucky if they even received kines, assuming their broadcast days began that early.

    Speaking of space, as another poster wryly did, I wonder if any segments dealt with space travel or astronomy? Depending on when Home debuted, it may have been after the June 1954 solar eclipse, for example.

    Given the audience demographics, I am curious if Home might have done any segments or interviews about space spinoffs, food in space, or how astronauts might make their home in the 50-man Earth-orbiting space stations envisioned and predicted by Willy Ley and Wernher Von Braun in the 1950s, including via the famous Colliers magazine series, a publication certainly read by a good many “housewives and homemakers,” among others? Or maybe Home did nothing on space. I am working toward a doctoral dissertation on radio and TV space coverage from 1923 to now, and this posting reminded me I have not really delved into what NBC-TV’s Home did or did not do. Thanks for any comments!

  13. Pierre Seguin

    A lighting director’s nightmare !!! LOL

  14. Rob Balton

    That’s one small shot for mankind!! Not a lot of bang for the buck from something that looks like the lunar lander!!

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