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Short But Sweet…NBC NY & Burbank Quick Shots, Early 70s

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Eyes Of A Generation.com


Short But Sweet…NBC NY & Burbank Quick Shots, Early 70s

Thanks to our friend John Schipp, we are able to see a little over a minute’s worth of rare footage inside 30 Rock and Burbank.

This is from a behind the scenes episode of NBC’s ‘The Go Show’ which aired briefly around 1973. It was a unique show, shot mostly in the field with RCA TK 76 ENG cameras and recorded on Ampex VR-3000 VTRs, a portable 2-inch quad machine.

With a little help from NBC’s Dennis Degan, here’s what we are seeing. “The first two shots look like Studio 5H Control Room, originally built in 1954. The TCR-100 (tape cartridge machine) shown in the clip was Machine #31, the one furthest to the left in a line of six TCR-100’s at NBC-NY. My maintenance shop was on the other side of the wall seen in the shot. The clip jumps to Burbank and Studio 4’s elephant doors, then home to ‘The Flip WIlson Show’ and ‘Midnight Special’. You can also get a glimpse of the set for ‘Sanford & Son’ which I think was in Studio 3. Then we flip back to NY for a shot of Frank Blair at his news desk, most likely Studio 3K and I think the closing moments are in Studio 4 again. I believe the clip was probably made in 1973. The TCR’s were first brought to market no earlier than 1972.” Comment, enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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24 responses to “Short But Sweet…NBC NY & Burbank Quick Shots, Early 70s”

  1. Tom Edwards

    Not really safe to operate a TCR-100 with a tie on…

  2. John Ondo

    Our poor non profit in Lima bought 3 TCR 100s in the last 80s, one for on air, two for parts. Going from all 3/4 playback for breaks. I don’t think we ever look as crisp again until they went digital 5 years later when they gave up on them. Digital is fun but not nearly as sexy as the days of spinning wheels and compressors of those artpieces of the 60s and 70s.

  3. Joan D. Jones

    Was there not supposed to be any sound?

  4. John Jewczyn

    I took it out in early ’76….they called it a 76 because it came out in ’76….the first camera without a backpack

  5. John Jewczyn

    Dave is right, they used PCP 90’s. I took out the prototype TK 76 from the Sarnoff lab to field test….we did not get them to use until the conventions that year.

  6. Dennis Majewicz

    Steven Davis, are you still at PRI?

  7. Don Hougland

    Did any of you guys work with Skip Hornbrook in video tape at Burbank?

  8. Steven Davis

    Later TCR-100s like the ones we had at WPRI had controls for the EPIS (Electronic Progam Identification System) in the upper left hand panel. With EPIS the title of the spot was encoded into a data burst in the cue track and the TCR would display the titles of the next two spots loaded into the A and B decks on a preview monitor.

  9. Richard Wirth

    Wish there was more!

  10. David Fell

    We were still using those TCRs at WLS-TV when I started here in 1982.

  11. Don Cox

    I have a VR-3K in my basement.

  12. George Thompson

    There were more than 6 TCR’s back in ’82. I helped take them out and replaced with GVG Profiles.

  13. Don Whittaker

    “The tractor.”

  14. Rick Zach

    Tom Sprague worked for RCA Tech Alert. He tells of a TCR100 story where a type47 light bulb was used with a photocell to confirm tape position. If you pushed it in too far, you’d put 12V into the 5V logic buss. At one station, poor Tom had to diagnose and replace many dozens of burned up RTL chips. Yes, not TTL but RTL which even back then were old and rare.

  15. Alan Gardner

    Yikes, a “TCR” never had to work with one, I was lucky to only have to use the ACR’s from Ampex!

  16. Gil Ludwig

    We had a TCR- 100 at KSDK IN St. Louis, plus the short lived Film Cart machine. Station was all RCA with TK-44 cameras. One TK-76 with portable 2″ recorder. Thanks for sharing the video. I would love to see more.

  17. Dennis Majewicz

    To be fair Rick, you could play :20’s back to back on a TCR but there wasn’t much need for it back in the day. Commercials were commonly :30 and even :60 back then. Even promos were :20 or :30’s. Even now with :15 bookends in a break the TCR could handle it.

    The TR600 was a strange bird. I worked on some that were heavily modified by NBC for the ’80 Olympics. They had me pulling my hair out at times.

  18. Dave Miller

    Propbably used other cameras. TK-76 wasn’t used until late 1975 at NBC.

  19. Rick Zach

    And you could not play short spots back to back on the TCR. With the vacuum-handled tape handling, the AMPEX ACR-25 was much faster, much better! Just like the AVR2 left the RCA TR600 in the dust. Went to maint school on both. And Camden was a pit compared to Redwood City. But they both made respectable high-end products.

  20. Dan Evans

    I loved our single TCR-100….right up until I hated it. 🙂 (it had a tendency to jam when loading the next event)

  21. Gary Walters

    About the TCR-100. When WUTV 29 Buffalo started service in December 1970, as except for its audio board, the facility was an RCA ‘turnkey’ operation, which included the TCR-100, with an inventory number in the single digits.

  22. Rick Zach

    I worked at NBC Burbank videotape when this was made in 1973. John gave me a copy in 1974 which I still have.

  23. James Stanley Barr

    Absolutely amazing. All that work to put in 30 minutes to an hour of programming on a weekly or daily basis.

  24. Eyes Of A Generation.com

    As you can see, the doors of Studio 4 have changed over the years.

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