TV History

By Request… For those that missed it, here is the camera mail box photo again. I’ve had several requests to re post this, so, here you go. This belongs to our friend John Lessa in Danville, Indiana. Source

Some Of The First Women In Television… Here’s LIFE Magazine photo spread from WBKB in Chicago in 1947. The camera is a Dumont and is being operated by a female. During WWII, this facility was on the air as an experimental station and many of the engineers and studio staff were women. There are…

Early Dumont Cameras: Configuration 2 Unlike the RCA cameras, the Dumont Iconoscope cameras had electronic viewfinders which were side mounted. This called for more equipment at the camera and this is one configuration of how that was done. I suspect the larger box is the camera control unit and the smaller one, the power…

ULTRA, ULTRA RARE: A CBS Pye Camera Below is a photo of James Dean and Betsy Palmer in ‘Sentence of Death’ which aired on CBS, August 17, 1953 on Westinghouse Studio One (Season 5, Episode 46). The camera is a Pye Mark II, Type 2014. This is the only photo I know of showing…

Super Rare! First Plumbicon Tests The smaller camera is one of two experimental models of the first color plumbicon camera from Philips. It is the predecessor of the Philips LDK1/Norelco PC60 and it ha been built inside the body of a Philips monochrome camera. It is being compared in performance by the BBC to…

CLASSIC! Final Days Of ‘Tonight’ With Johnny Carson This is a great behind the scenes look at the show, shot in the final days of production with Johnny and Ed as hosts. The year is 1992 and the cameras are RCA TK47s. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSDcQkpb9sE A Behind the Scenes Look at Production of The Tonight…

Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts: CBS 1958-1972 These special musical presentations for young people by The New York Philharmonic were actually started in 1924, but when conductor Leonard Bernstein arrived in 1958, he and CBS took it to a new level. These originated from Carnegie Hall, but in 1962 the orchestra moved to the…

Classic Intro Here’s a cameraman at CBS Television City getting ready for the opening shot of ‘Art Linkletter’s House Party’. At show time, the red chase lights come on. The camera is the RCA TK11. Source

RCA Exhibition Studio…1964 World’s Fair To give the RCA TK41s on display something to do, RCA offered to do live and recorded public service shows from their facility. This is a taping of The Bronx Zoo Show. Many of us that visited usually saw only an empty studio, but at least we got to…

FINALLY! Chuck Pharis Has Unpacked! After the move from California to Tennessee a couple of years ago, our friend Chuck has finished putting together a new camera room at his home. I’ll have more photos tomorrow, and many more of his collection in a few weeks when I go up and visit. Congratulations to…

Steve Allen & The Hudson Theater In 1954, ‘The Tonight Show’ debuted on the NBC Television Network and was broadcast from The Hudson Theater. Before ‘The Tonight Show’, WNBT had originated ‘The Steve Allen Show’ from there for local NYC audiences. In 1957, Jack Paar took over as host and I’m pretty sure that’s…

Amazing! Saturday Night Live and Studio 8H In Action In the first part of this timelapse video, we see the remarkable movement of the crew and scenery in a rehearsal. The second part of the video is shot from a timelapse cam on the Chapman Electra crane with our friend John Pinto in the…

After months of searching, I finally know the story behind this fabulous photo array! This is NBC’s ‘Saturday Color Carnival: A Salute To Baseball’! This was done live from the Colonial Theater in the early spring of 1957. Notice a couple of the cameras are RCA TK40s and a couple are TK41s. The lineup…

In The Days Of Not So Instant Replays… Our friend Richard Wirth has a new article on the history of kinescopes and video tape development. Linking the east and west costs by coaxial cable was a blessing and a curse for networks because of the need to delay broadcasts going west. Here’s a look…

Ultra Rare 1: ‘The Voice Of Firestone’, NBC Studio 8H, 1949 Believe it or not, this is a ‘remote’ broadcast. At 30 Rockefeller Plaza, there were only two television studios at this point…3H and 8G. 3H was converted from radio to TV in 1935 and was home to all the experimental black and white…

Ultra Rare 2: ‘The Voice Of Firestone’, NBC Studio 8H, 1949 If you look closely, you can see 3 RCA TK30 cameras in this photo. There’s a good chance there was at least one more in the balcony. Interestingly, in this photo, Studio 8H looks a lot like the studio as we know it…

The iconic stars were reunited and interviewed on the popular talk show “The Dinah Shore Show” in 1975. ***A 20 minute version of this reunion interview is a… Source

Letterman Tribute To Johnny Carson, Part 3 of 6 A week or so after Carson’s death, Dave did a great tribute show to his mentor…this is part 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3k2OELRIWo Dave shows some short clips of Johnny Carson appearances on Dave’s Show. Please visit CBS.com for more great Letterman clips. Source

The Bell Telephone Hour…1959-1968 Above is a clip from ‘The Bell Telephone Hour’, an NBC classic that focused on music, both classical and Broadway. This was one of the first TV series to be telecast exclusively in color and recorded on videotape. In this photo, RCA TK41s at NBC Brooklyn circle up for a…