TV History

This was a live color broadcast from NBC’s Brooklyn Studios and it was a huge production with lots of sets. Most of the actors in this musical were members of the original Broadway cast, except a very young Jack Klugman who sang and danced. I would have loved to been there for a live…

Need A Lift Dinah? In a 1952 episode of the twice weekly, 15 minute ‘Dinah Shore Show’, our star hitches a ride on a Panoram dolly with an extra sideboard. In ’56, Shore began hosting a monthly series of one-hour full-color spectaculars as part of NBC’s ‘The Chevy Show’ series. These proved so popular…

ULTRA RARE: Classic Photo Here are two of America’s most famous clowns ever, together…Emit Kelly and Clarabell. The photos is on the set of a 1949 WNBT show who’s name, I think, is ‘Television Screen Magazine’ and this is most likely in famed NBC Studio 3H. The lady is co host, Ursula Halloran. Source

May 8, 1945, Victory In Europe To celebrate, WNBT broadcast hours of news coverage on the end of World War II in Europe with remotes from around New York City. Here, we see an RCA Orthicon camera atop the marquee of the Astor Hotel in panning the happy crowd below. This vivid coverage was…

ABC’s First Series ‘Hollywood Screen Test’ was the first network series broadcast on ABC-TV, and started on day one along with the brand new network. Debuting on 15 April 1948, and hosted first by Bert Lytell and then Neil Hamilton, who is shown above, ‘Hollywood Screen Test’ sought to give exposure to many up-and-coming…

John Vassos: Transparent Television Yesterday, I posted a story on industrial design pioneer John Vassos and his influence on the RCA Television cameras. Today, I thought I’d show you the plexiglass TRK 12 receiver he built for the 1939 World’s Fair. Vassos helped design the RCA building there, and all of the display areas.…

One That Never Made It RCA once disclosed that they had spent over $200,000,000 developing color television. I don’t doubt it…it was expensive work to do and this Tri Color Vidicon tube is proof.  Here in this photo from April of 1953, Dr. Paul Weimer of RCA Labs poses with the new tube idea…

Friday, September 7th, 2022 was the 95th anniversary of the invention of electronic television. In 1927, 21 year old Philo T. Farnsworth and his 18 year old bride, Pem, demonstrated their invention to two Crocker Bank investors in the second floor lab of a rented garage at 202 Green Street in San Francisco. That…

John Vassos and RCA ‘Television’ If you look where Milton’s hand is, you are seeing the hand of one of America’s first industrial designers…John Vassos. The ‘Television’ and ‘Color Television’ badges that adorn all the early RCA cameras and telecine equipment was designed by Mr. Vassos. The classic look and style of the TK40/41…

Ampex VR 1200, Up Close and Personal For those who have never seen a big Quad videotape machine in action, here’s your big chance. As you’ll see, it’s not as easy as just pressing the ‘Play’ button. We forget sometimes how far video technology has come in just the past few years. I recently…

ULTRA RARE CLASSIC PHOTO! See the just added video…see it here! Together, working on a very early 1952 edition of ‘See It Now’, we see two legends of CBS News…Edward R Murrow, and, the shows first director, Don Hewitt. This is the first and only image I have ever seen of both of them…

Smoke and Mirrors A while back, there were some questions about an Ernie Kovacs photo posted here that had him pouring water (that was missing the glass), on a titled gimble set. The set was at quite an angle but the viewfinder shot was level…how? Mirrors. This old style system is still around and…

The 1956 Conventions: The Birth Of A Team In 1956, both the Democratic (San Francisco) and Republican (Chicago) political conventions were big events for television. To anchor at both, NBC paired Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. They were well received and the rest, as they say, is history. By 1956, NBC executives had grown…

On September 4, 1962 CBS became the first network to air a half hour of television news. Walter Cronkite had replaced the original anchor, Douglas Edwards, in April of that year. A week later, The Huntley-Brinkley Report at NBC went to a half hour as well. On May 3, 1948, Douglas Edwards began anchoring…

WNBT (NBC), 1941 Rate Card – Part A When I first saw this, I was stunned. At first, I thought they wanted $120 for a 60 second spot, but no…it was $120 per hour to sponsor a show. That’s more like it, especially when you consider that there were only 2,000 sets in the…

WNBT (NBC), December 1941 – Part B Just 2 weeks before this, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and we were at war with Germany, Italy and Japan. Even this meager schedule of programming would basically go to nothing in the next few years as production of home receivers was replaced by radar and radio equipment…

Surprise, Surprise! Who knew that ABC had robotic cameras this early? The cameras I think are Ikegami HK 312E models, or another early Iki, so this would be in the late 80s maybe. The center camera is on a Fulmar ped and there’s a human running it, but the other two…well, I’m just amazed…

Who Knew Atlanta, GA and Mayberry, NC were so close? Below in pink, you see Tara from ‘Gone With The Wind’ and under it, the Mayberry set for the ‘Andy Griffith Show’ on the ‘Back Forty’. Forty Acres was a film studio backlot that belonged to RKO Pictures and later Desilu Productions, located in…

INCREDIBLY RARE PHOTO! This is Red Barber with something few have ever seen before. Of Red’s own invention, this panel is connected to the WOR-TV remote truck and shows the director areas of the field Red wants to comment on. This gives the director a heads up so he can get a camera on…