TV History

Marconi Mark IVs and RCA TK60s In Action! From Jerry Lewis’s ‘The Patsy’ from 1964, this clip captures two great TV studio scenes. The first shows the Marconis in action and the second shows the TK60. Had the camera uses been reversed, it would have been correct as Sullivan never had TK60s, but did…

See Anything “Interesting” In This 1907 Photo? Yes…a microphone! Believe it or not, Thomas Edison had been working on adding sound to film as early as 1895 with the Kinetophone. Basically it was a wax cylinder recording that was not synchronized with the images and debuted in the peep show style, single viewer, flip…

The Edison Studios…Home Of The First Motion Pictures In 1907, Edison had new facilities built on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place in the Bronx and the photo below was taken there in 1908. This was the third studio Edison built. Its first production facility, Edison’s Black Maria studios in West Orange, New Jersey, was…

Two Points Of Interest… Before it was renamed ‘Kukla, Fran And Ollie’ in October of 1948 when it moved to WNBQ and NBC, the show was called ‘Junior Jamboree’ and debuted on Chicago’s WBKB in November of ’47. Although WBKB was able to buy the new RCA TK30 IO cameras, it could not afford…

CBS Uses Thomson Cameras…1985 NCAA Championships Yesterday, veteran cameraman Kevin Vahey mentioned in a note his surprise to see CBS using Thomson cameras on a remote in 1977 in Los Angeles. Kevin wondered if that was just an LA truck or if there was more to it. I think there was more to it…

America’s Camera Collections My friend Richard Wirth recently published this article “Vintage Video Collections” that shines a light on the custodians of what’s left of the vintage television equipment, and where it is now. Enjoy! http://provideocoalition.com/pvcexclusive/story/the-collections Vintage Video Collections In 1953, color television became a reality in the US.  At the time, the cameras…

Look Ma…No Viewfinders! The RCA TK30s became available in late 1946, but there was some element used in building the viewfinders that was in very short supply. The networks got viewfinders, but the local stations had to wait. The problem went away after about six months, but local stations that bought them had do…

Small World… As it turns out, this is one of my RCA TK60s. I just found this photo in a 1960s RCA Broadcast News…it was shot at WCVE TV which is Richmond, Virginia’s PBS station. They had two TK60s and I have them both in my collection now. Source

One Of My Favorite Cameras This is the Marconi Mark IV. It’s standard tube was the 4.5″ Image Orthicon and this could have been the first camera to make use of the 4.5″ IO as the 1958 RCA TK14 used the 3″ and it was not till 1960 that the TK12 aka TK60 debuted…

The Baughman Pedestal This little mobile pedestal was a real work horse from the 1950s till the 80s. Originally made by Baughman, Houston Fearless copied it as did other camera support makers including ITC. There was a hydraulic version and this one, the manual crank version for height adjustment. This is my RCA TK11/31…

The Answer to Randy West’s Question, And More… In a recent post showing the CBS Field Sequential Color Cameras, Randy asked where the mechanical color wheel was on the camera. Take a look at the extra plate added just above the lens turret on this modified RCA TK10…the color wheel is mounted behind that…

Now You Know Why… Ever wonder why Johnny Carson sometime looked like he was talking to a balcony audience? Well, take a good look at Studio 1 in Burbank and you’ll understand. Although there is no balcony, the audience seating is very high and at a pretty steep incline…like stadium seating and the people…

Per Episode Production Cost Of One Hour Shows The 1970s was the first full decade of all color programming for all networks. These figures are quite tame compared to today’s costs! Click to enlarge for the whole list. Source

Early Color Challenges How do you develop first quality color broadcasts without the ability to properly monitor and calibrate your results? The answer for RCA was with patience and lots of testing. That’s what the Colonial Theater was for. This photo was taken there around 1953 and shows one (one of four) of the…

‘I Love Lucy’ From the set, here is a look at what Lucy, Rickey, Fred and Ethyl saw when they filmed. In the white shirt between the boom and camera, Desi Arnaz visits with the audience before he does the warm up, which he usually did for each show. The third man to the…

Live From Leiderkrantz Hall? Yes! That was where Douglas Edwards began hosting network television’s very first, live anchor news show. CBS Studios 53 through 56 were located there at 111 East 58th Street from 1947 through 1964. Amazingly, the news room was 10 blocks away and each night, it was a mad dash via…

Day One Of ‘Today’ Below is a photo taken on January 14, 1952…the day ‘Today’ debuted. In pre-production panning, the show went by the title of ‘The Rise And Shine Revue’. Dave Garroway (shown here) was the original host and was joined by news editor Jim Fleming and announcer Jack Lescoulie when the show…

‘Mike And Buff’ In response to yesterday’s post on the CBS color broadcasts, Mark VonderEmbse noticed one of the shows broadcast was the ‘Mike And Buff’ show with Mike Wallace and then wife, Buff Cobb. Here is a 1951 publicity photo of them Mark sent. Thanks! Source