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ABC, Color College Football…Texas Tech, 1971

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

ABC, Color College Football…Texas Tech, 1971

Back in the TK41 days, brute strength was part of the requirement for assignment to the sports trucks. The camera weighed about 260 pounds and the viewfinder, another 60 for a total of around 320. And then there is the cable, but at least these are single cable TK41s…on the original three cable models, the cables weighted over three pound per foot.

Here’s what the day before the game looked like back then. This was a two truck shoot with 6 TK41s on the camera truck and the second truck had four or five huge quad video tape machines inside. The third truck is the utility truck and doubled as the graphics studio with a black and white TK60 shooting score cards in the back of it. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee









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17 responses to “ABC, Color College Football…Texas Tech, 1971”

  1. Oliver Kiell

    Really interesting info here guys!! Im a big fan of OB work, this is the real deal! How come TK41s were used and not the smaller Norelco PC60s?

  2. Zak Robbins

    Wow. Just wow. I will never say a camera case or cable is heavy ever again.

  3. Mike Ogletree

    Those are my pics!

  4. Bob Paine

    260 pounds! That’s heavier than the RCA BC-76 console minus power supply. I carried one several times. But the camera – any wonder I chose radio over TV? 🙂

  5. Simon Crawshaw

    here is an ABC mobile promo picture from 1976 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ABC_Television_Mobile_Unit_1976.JPG

  6. John Roger Bolin

    Anyone know where these TK41’s ended up?

  7. Charlie Huntley

    Before my Network Tv Time
    Only by a Moment
    I started with GE and Norelco color cameras in the 1968-75 era
    TelFax and TPC single short trucks.
    Then the Innovative German Fernseh color Camera with light bright Red Camera Cable
    TAV and CCR TRUCKS

  8. Charles Park Seward

    Yep. We have it easy today compared with the TK 41 days. But there are still uncabeled stadiums with no elevators.

  9. Steve Dichter

    Bobby, you know well my experiences w/TK-41 cameras at KTLA-TV in the 60’s into the 70’s. Nothing was lite weight. We generally set up 3 TK-41’s for most sports remotes or parades ect. Each man grabbed a corner and carried and than hefted the camera onto a pre-positioned tripod. After setting up that tripod and attached the weighty cradle head. Then lastly, the view finder. Of course this after running many hundreds of feet of the single strand cable, sometimes straight up the side of a stadium to the press box. Tough work indeed!

  10. Gordon C. Powell

    Guns up Red Raiders!
    There are elevators there now.

  11. John Holt

    Gary spoke of the TOC in Chicago and that reminded me of the live commercial for a lawn mower coming out of WLS-TV for the football game. It was tested many times. The cold engine had to have the choke adjust and the mower started every time. Unfortunately it was tested just before the live insert. So, the talent adjusted the choke and the engine didn’t start. It was already hot so the choke needed to be left alone.

  12. Jim Travers

    Thank you Bobby, I absolutely love these posts!

  13. Mike Mecartea

    Anybody remember loading the camera up to the end zone tower at the old Denver stadium ?

  14. Steve Cohn

    I didn’t start in television until 1971 with TK-44A’s and doing local football and basketball with a three-camera truck and one or two TR-60’s. Even then those were heavy beasts compared to today’s gear, but nothing compared to what Bobby was just recalling. But I completely agree with Russ Ross’s comments below, that the training was invaluable and it really did separate the wheat from the chaff. I loved truck ops back then and today’s folks have no idea what it was like back then or the countless lessons that were learned on the fly.

  15. Russell Ross

    Yes, the 41’s were heavy and back before pre cabled stadiums….. each week was starting “a new”. The setup as far as NBC was concerned was 3 cables per camera(red,blue,green and a spare for each camera). It was tough work work running cables each week and then bringing the 41’s to their operating position. I will say that because of the weight of the camera when on air always made for smooth operation as opposed to the lightweight 760’s which were terrible !!! As you may have guessed I’m of the older generation. The training back then was invaluable for knowing what to do. It wasn’t “plug and play” like today.

  16. John Holt

    I’ve told the story before (many times, I just don’t know where) about completely destroying the ABC every Saturday and then putting it back together practically station by station. I worked for Michigan Bell radio and TV. Each Friday at 4pm there was a closed circuit discussion with an ABC engineer and an AT&T engineer about which stations would originate certain regional games, what stations would carry each regional, how AT&T would connect them, which other regional game a station would connect to when a game ended (the stations broadcasting one regional game would not all switch to the same game when it ended) and then how it would all be connected back together. The two engineers had a map of the network and pointers as they went through the schedule, breakup and reconnect. This took an hour.

  17. William Mahon

    Thank goodness for the transistor. Can’t imagine having to shoot live with gear that heavy.

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