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Dumont was first with this video/film hybrid system which they called the Electronicam, and it debuted just before it was used on ‘The Honeymooners’ Classic 39 film episodes in 1954. This Gemini System from UK optics company Rank (as in Rank, Taylor, Hobson) came out around 1957, and as the Broadcasting Magazine article states,…

When ‘I Love Lucy’ debuted October 15, 1951, the first episode to air was “The Girls Want To Go To A Nightclub”, but the first episode to be filmed was “Lucy Thinks Ricky Is Trying To Murder Her” which was filmed on September 8, 1951. It aired as the fourth episode on November 5th.…

This is the history of football on television as told by some of the greatest ever producers and directors including Chet Forte, Roone Arledge, Ted Nathanson, Drew Esocoff, Tony Verna, Doug Wilson, Joe Acenti, Bob Fishman and Mike Arnold. This is a must read article written by David Davis for The Director’s Guild Of…

RARE! The NBC Color Caravan Story…June 9 – August 11, 1954 Some have heard about this, but for those that haven’t, we finally have the NBC Chimes Magazine article from August of ’54, thanks to our friend Dicky Howett in The UK. RCA and NBC were proud as peacocks with their new color abilities…

Now This Is Interesting! Introduction Of The Auricon Pro 1200 We don’t spend much time on film cameras here, but this is such an interesting piece of film, I thought you would like to see it. Thanks Steve Williams for sharing this. At first, I thought the “studio finder” was perhaps an electronic video…

I was digging through some old photos this morning and came across this and it reminded me to set the record straight on ABC’s first homemade mini cameras that we see in use here on ‘Wide World Of Sports’ A while back I had mentioned that they were made from RCA TK30s, but I…

This is a fantastic, first hand account from Ampex videotape team member Fred Pfost of the entire process of creating the VR-1000… the world’s first commercially viable videotape machine. This is a rare front row seat to one of television’s biggest ever moments and beautifully told by someone who was there. There are details…

This is a fascinating article from Ted Elrick in “The Director’s Guild Of America Quarterly” on how the show was done. There is a lot of information there you won’t read anywhere else. The whole article is copied below. http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/0307-July-2003/I-Love-Lucy.aspx In the photo, we see Desi Arnaz with Jess Oppenheimer looking at a control…

It was always my opinion that CBS only kept the Norelco PC60s at Studio 50 (The Ed Sullivan Theater), for eighteen months or so. Now that is confirmed with this article that appeared on my sixteenth birthday in Broadcasting Magazine. In another Halloween quirk, it was October 31, 1965 when the ‘Ed Sullivan Show’…

The debut of the RCA TK30 Image Orthicon camera was live in half of the nation and on kinescope for the rest, so this better be good! And it was! This was trial by fire. RCA worked so fast to get six TK30s to NBC in New York for the Lewis-Conn rematch at Yankee…

In the center is an NBC publicity photo of Bill Stern. Mr. Stern is the man that called the action on the first ever televised sporting event…the second game of a baseball doubleheader between Princeton and Columbia at Columbia’s Baker Field on May 17, 1939 as seen on the left. On September 30, 1939…

You would think RCA lead the way in this area, but they were more focused on studio color cameras in the late 60s as the TK42/43 project had gone badly and Norelco was eating their lunch. Now, this is not to say that there were not some RCA/NBC experimental color portables in use, but…

Laugh Tracks: Ultra Rare Black Box Found! This is an amazing find! From ‘Antiques Roadshow’ here is the video of the Charlie Douglas ‘Laff Box’, built in 1953, which was discovered among the items sold in a storage locker sale! Back in the 50s and 60s, Charlie Douglas was ‘The Man’ for laugh tracks…

April 11, 1956 is a day that truly changed television! Here it the story of that day and the hectic months at Ampex that followed this blockbuster announcement. On April 11, 1956, Ampex engineers Phil Gundy and Charlie Ginsburg introduced one of two existing video recorder prototypes to the National Association of Radio and…

Notice the photo in the window of Jack Paar. Hurley’s was where Jack Paar went the night of February 11, 1960…the night he walked off the ‘Tonight’ when a network censor edited out one of his jokes from the previous night’s taped broadcast. Paar wasn’t really hiding, but didn’t want to be inside NBC…

“NBC Studio 1H”…Hurely’s Bar As you can see in the photo below, Hurley’s Bar (which opened in 1892) was just a half a block away from NBC’s studio entrance, making it the nearest watering hole for everyone from stars to stage hands. It became the favorite for radio, television, newspaper and sports celebrities as…

Here is a great, four page story that covers 20+ years of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ from the guy that was the stage manger for the whole run, BUT HIS PERSONAL ARCHIVES ARE HERE, SO USE THE SEARCH FEATURE AT THE TOP RIGHT OF THE PAGE TO FIND THEM ALL! This is a one…

The First Camera Dolly, 1936 In the patent application, this is referred to as a “camera carriage” and as you can see, it has only three wheels. Designed by Victor Raby and made by Studio Equipment Company, these are now rare items and only a couple of these are still around. One of the…

Necessity Is The Mother Of Invention…The Cradle Head Patent The Fearless Camera Company and RCA had a good thing going… Fearless (later, Houston Fearless) built the support equipment and RCA’s built the cameras and distributed for Fearless. As you can see in the photo on the right, the first experimental TK40 color cameras used…