TV History

The clip kicks off with Dick Clark introducing Chubby Checker in front of a crane‑mounted RCA TK‑10 at The Little Theater, home of his New York Saturday Night Beechnut Show for three solid years. Then you get a great moment: Conway Twitty, Chubby, and Clark all twisting during rehearsal. And yes—this is 1960, back…

Look Sharp…Feel Sharp…Be Sharp! That was the Gillette Razor ad copy and I still remember it, and the great opening music of the Cavalcade Of Sports show like it was yesterday. I used to watch this with my dad on Friday nights. Here’s the intro…enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6cyy_rziuk Featuring the Look Sharp March 1958 Source

Flying By The Seat Of Her Pants…Almost Before mounting the Chapman Electra stage crane for another round of ‘Family Feud’, our friend Donna Quante ‘checks the oil’ on her Norelco PC70. Very nice shot and we thank Donna for it, and many others. Do you have pix to share? Source

Flying By The Seat Of His Pants…But Just Barely Marconi Mark II cameras capture the action of scene, but the real action is on the end of that dolly boom. That’s quite a balancing act. I see a Vinten logo on the boom arm, but don’t recognize the model. Neither the Pathfinder II dolly…

The First Hand Held Broadcast Camera This is the RCA ‘Walkie Lookie’ miniature wireless Vidicon camera designed for coverage of the 1952 Political Conventions. With so much attention to the Ikegami ‘Handy Lookie’ in the posts below, I just wanted to remind you who was actually first with this technology. RCA and the USA!…

Mystery Solved #1 The First Ikegami Studio Camera Without a doubt, this is the first professional studio camera from Ikegami. The camera with the big box zoom lens is the Ikegami TK 301A. I had searched and searched for a photo, but all I could find was a tiny thumbnail size. When I blew…

Mystery Solved #2 I had thought the old pedestals used with the Iconoscope cameras in the 30s and 40s were perhaps hydrolac, but…not anymore. Thanks to further research by our friend Paul Beck, we now know these peds had an electric motor to take them up and down. In reexamining my archives, I came…

Ampex Training Tape: VR 2000 In a super rare set of tapes from Ampex, here are all three parts of the 1964 master training session for all new owners of the Ampex VR 2000, color capable, video tape recorder. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bFPPJgFUJg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmqqNitHJg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjC-TsFbClI Ampex training on the operation of the VR-2000 2″ Quad VTR,…

Ah Ha! Ever wonder how they get those great underwater shots in swimming events? This the the Spirit system from Deep Vision. Check out the demo video. Source

The EMI 203 This handsome camera debuted in 1960 with a 4 1/2 inch Image Orthicon tube. Here, BBC veteran cameraman Ron Green is at the controls and both are riding the Vinten, Heron studio crane. A few weeks back I posted a photo of this lens model from Angenieux, which is made for…

Time For Beany! April 1950 Above is a photo from April of 1950 at KTLA. In the middle, doing Cecil is Stan Freberg and on the right is Daws Butler doing Beany. I’m not sure who the ‘spare hand’ is handling the seltzer bottle, but it could be producer Bob Clampett. If not, it…

‘Westinghouse Studio One’, The Scarlet Letter: April 1950 In 1948, ‘Westinghouse Studio One’ made a quantum leap from radio to television. The television series was seen on CBS from 1948 through 1958, under several variant titles: Studio One Summer Theater, Summer Theater, Westinghouse Studio One and Westinghouse Summer Theater. CBS produced the show in…

Gone, But Not Forgotten…The Orange Bowl Parade Tomorrow, one of the nations oldest bowl games will be played in Miami but today, New Years Eve was the day the Orange Bowl Parade happened. It was a rare night parade and kicked off at 7PM, just like it had since 1936. Unfortunately, in 2002 that…

We’ll Miss Dick Clark Tonight! The photo is from New Year’s Eve 1988, and the story below is from the New York Times from April of this year. It’s a nice and interesting read. Enjoy and Happy New Year! ____________________________________________________ Dick Clark had a commuter’s relationship with New York — a long-distance commuter’s relationship.…

KOTV: Tulsa, Oklahoma KOTV signed on in October of 1949 and became the nation’s 90th TV station. As the only station in the market for several years, they ran programs from ABC, CBS, NBC and Dumont. At first, network programming was aired about a week after being broadcast live on the East Coast; it…

A Big Move For CBS… The Norelco PC60 and 70 cameras were bought in bulk by CBS starting in 1965. With an aging fleet of cameras, CBS began to wonder what was next. It’s quite common for camera makers to loan a network several camera for evaluation and that process started in the late…

Ampex VRX 1000: First Videotape Recorder The Ampex VRX-1000 (later renamed the Mark IV) was introduced on March 14, 1956, at the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters in Chicago. This is the world’s first practical videotape recorder and is hailed as a major technological breakthrough. In this photo, CBS goes on air…

The TRT 1: RCA’s First Videotape Recorder Although Ampex beat RCA to the punch, with the introduction of the VRX 1000 in March of 1956, RCA knew how to record in color and Ampex didn’t. For each one to get what they needed, they made a deal to share technology. At RCA this resulted…

Remember Pinkey Lee? I do! Pincus Leff (May 2, 1907 – April 3, 1993) was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Pee Wee Herman and Pee Wee’s Playhouse is loosely based on Pinkey Lee. I’m not sure but think this was done at KHJ. Anyone know?