TV History

NBC Studio 8H, May 1951 NBC Studio 8G was converted in 1948, but as NBC Radio’s largest studio, 8H was not converted till 1950. This image is from the May 1951 edition of Popular Science and had just changed it’s title from “America’s largest radio studio” to “America’s largest television studio”. Television was not…

The Norelco Shaver Christmas Commercials…Then & Now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUQycfgCjr0 The link above is to the original spot from the 60s, and below is the new version…both still done in stop action Claymation, but today’s have a bit of CGI help too. The voice from the 1960s through the early 2000s was the legendary Peter Thomas.…

Remember This? One Of The First Christmas Specials For Kids ‘The Spirit Of Christmas’, first aired in 1953 and was sponsored by Bell Telephone. The holiday special was produced by puppeteer Mabel Beaton, who started performing marionette shows for her community in a make-shift theater during the 1930s. By the late 40s, she decided…

The True Story Of “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer” This news article was written by Robert May…the man who wrote the book for Montgomery Ward. This is quite a touching story. What is not mentioned here is that in the months that it took to write it, he was raising his 4 year old…

‘Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer’ 1944/1948 This cartoon from Max Fleischer Studios is thought to be the first ever, animated depiction of the original story written by Robert May in 1939. This was released in theaters in December of 1944, but the now famous song was not written until 1947. In ’48 the song,…

Judy Garland Christmas Special…1963 From Studio 43 at CBS Television City, here’s the whole on hour special complete with commercials and notice how FEW there were back then, only 8 minutes per hour. I think this was shot with their new Marconi Mark IV b/w cameras. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzCL3FM9dDc In this charming live holiday TV…

Fred Mertz? Almost… This is James Gleason who you may remember best for his roll in the classic, ‘Here Comes Mr. Jordan’. He also co wrote ‘The Broadway Melody’, the second film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Gleason worked with Lucille Ball on ‘Miss Grant Takes Richmond’ in 1948 and when…

Jeopardy! : A Fred Westbrook Photo This is another shot of the show from NBC Studio 6A. The show’s host, Art Fleming has his back to us at one of the producers does a pre show warm up with the audience. This was quite likely a three or four camera show, no matter where…

‘Scrooged’ Paramount Pictures, 1988 I’ll bet you never recognized all four of the street carolers insulted by Bill Murray…I didn’t either. The leader is Paul Shaffer and the others are Miles Davis, David Sanborn and Larry Carlton, three of the biggest names in jazz. The names of the Christmas television shows from the IBC…

The Chapman Sidewinder This little workhorse debuted in the 70s and with it’s 6 foot riser arm could get a camera lens 9 feet high and the arm could go all the way to floor level. It can crab and dolly too. You see more of these on the west coast than the east…

‘Truth Or Consequences’: A Fred Westbrook Photo Did you know this was the first game show ever to air on television? It’s true! ‘Truth or Consequences’ aired as a one-time experiment on the first day of New York station WNBT’s commercial program schedule on July 1, 1941. It was hosted by Ralph Edwards who…

Inside The First RCA Experimental Color Cameras This is Richard C. Webb, designer of the first simultaneous, all-electronic color camera with the Wardman Park dolly mounted camera (as seen in the photo below) with it’s chassis and viewfinder removed. At the front of the cameras is the early optical system of dichroic mirrors bouncing…

RCA’s First Experimental Color Television Cameras Shown here are the first two RCA color cameras made. The photo was taken at NBC/RCA’s Wardman Park Studio in Washington DC around 1949. The camera on the left has the lens cowl removed and notice that the color splitting mirrors are mounted in front of the fixed…

What A HOOT! You MUST See This! Take 5 minutes to watch this ULTRA RARE clip. This is Merv Griffin’s first TV show ‘Play Your Hunch’, but the GUESTS…WOW! Three of the biggest song writers of the day (early ’60s) and you’ll be stunned at what their songs were, even then! You know them…

1964, Republican National Convention, San Francisco Great shot of the Marconi Mark IV in it’s suspended bucket with a couple of RCA TK11/31s on in front of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. The ABC cameras have been brought in from KPTV in Portland, OR. Back then, ABC, CBS and NBC would bring in a total…

‘The Red Skelton Show’: CBS Television City, Studio 33 This photo from dress rehearsal on January 15, 1957, the first show he had done in several weeks after learning that his 9 year old son, Richard, had leukemia. On December 1, I posted here about how CBS moved their color cameras around in Television…

‘Peter Pan’, One Of The First NBC Color Spectaculars The first president of NBC Television was Pat Weaver. He came from NBC radio and was the man that created ‘Today’, ‘Tonight’, ‘Monitor’ on NBC radio, and “spectaculars”. Many of the spectaculars were done by Fred Coe under ‘The Producers Showcase’ umbrella and were all…