TV History

April 29, 1961…ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports” Debuts This video is from the last episode of ABC’s “Wide World Of Sports” debut season which started April 29, 1961. This clip highlights some firsts in football coverage. This is the first use of a crane camera over the field, microphones on the quarterbacks and possibly,…

Just For Fun, And Lots Of It! Johnny Caron’s 25th Anniversary Show The opening billboard of famous names is just staggering, and they are all here in clips, but so are some of the show’s greatest disasters, which start at about 31 minutes in. There are also clips of first time appearances from the…

2 Ultra Rare Views Of The Ed Sullivan Theater…Must See! Aside from this super rare 1936 photo of the inside of what was then CBS Radio Theater #3, we also get a 360 degree tour of the Letterman set! First, thanks to Val Ginter for this amazing shot of the theater in it’s radio…

Ralph Levy: Television Director Extraordinaire… Ralph Levy, TV pioneer and two-time Emmy winning director, is remembered by TV historians as the man who directed the original ‘I Love Lucy’ pilot in March, 1951, which made his passing on the date of Lucy’s 50th Anniversary, all the more poignant. Born into a family of Philadelphia…

April 1981…The Last Episode Of “Soap” Airs On ABC In spite of six months of controversy before it ever hit the air, “Soap” ranked #13 in the top 20 shows of the 1977-78 season and had good ratings is whole four year run. In 2007, Time Magazine, which initially panned the show, named it…

A Tribute To…”Your Show Of Shows”, Part 1 of 2 On February 25, 1950, “Your Show Of Shows” debuted On NBC, as part of a two-and-a-half-hour block that was called “Saturday Night Review.” YSOS is the great grandaddy of “Saturday Night Live”. The first hour, was “The Jack Carter Show,” a comedy and variety…

A Tribute To…”Your Show Of Shows”, Part 2 of 2 Rare photos from inside NBC’s first converted television theater, The International Theater, at 5 Columbus Circle. Please read the text below the photo block, but here is some of what you are looking at. In the photo at the top, we are able to…

Some Of The First RCA TK30s Delivered…KSD TV, St. Louis As I mentioned earlier this week, the first five RCA TK30 Image Orthicon cameras ever built, were delivered to NBC New York for the Lewis – Conn fight in June of 1946. Naturally, being owned by RCA, gets you to the front of the…

April 22, 1966…A Moment In Time With Sammy Davis This opens with a great shot of Sammy standing in front of an RCA TK41 operated by veteran cameraman Frank Gaeta. This was the fifteenth and last episode of “The Sammy Davis Jr. Show”, from NBC’s Brooklyn Studios on April 22, 1966. Notice at the…

Via Kinescope…A Trip Back To April 1956 With Milton Berle Above, we go to the live “Milton Berle Show”, from the USS Hancock in San Diego. Here’s the whole show with Elvis Presley debting “Blue Suede Shoes”, Esther Williams, Harry James and Buddy Rich filling out the bill, with Arnold Stang joining Milton for…

Camera Rarities 1, Of 3…First NBC Tests Of The RCA TK30? Thanks to Tom Buckley, here is a very rare photo, that I think was taken in the two week period between June 5 and June 18, 1946. On June 19, 1946, NBC’s broadcast of the Joe Lewis-Billy Conn rematch at Yankee Stadium, was…

Camera Rarities 2, Of 3…Three Generations Of GE Cameras From 1969, here is a photo of three generations of GE’s at Fort Worth’s KTVT. Starting with the KTVT marked camera, that is a black and white GE PC11. On the left is the GE PC25, their first color camera; this one has a four…

Camera Rarities 3, Of 3…The NBC Studio 8G Cameras NBC’s official grand opening date for 8G, their second ever television studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is listed as April 22, 1948. Actually, television had been coming from 8G long before that, while it was still designated a radio studio. The first show ever to…

April 19, 1948…The Start Of The ABC Television Network 68 years ago today, on April 19, 1948, the ABC Television Network began its broadcasts on its first primary affiliate, WFIL-TV in Philadelphia. The debut show was “On The Corner” with host Henry Morgan, which was also the name of his radio show on ABC’s…

This Week In Sports TV History…Jackie Robinson Scores Again In the photo, Leo Durocher welcomes Jackie Robinson to television in the brand new Shea Stadium. On April 17, 1965, Robinson became the first black network broadcaster for Major League Baseball. In 1965, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts on…

April 18, 1964…April 18, 2012; Remembering Dick Clark On this day in 1964, The Beach Boys performed “Fun, Fun, Fun” and “I Get Around” on “American Bandstand.” Afterward, Dick did this interview with them. On this day in 2012, “America’s Oldest Teenager” passed away. I had the good fortune of knowing and working with…

April 18, 1966…The First Color Oscars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUQRLNGRxEY&ab_channel=Oscars Above is a photo of our friend Don “Peaches” Langford with his crane mounted ABC TK41 in front of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, April 18, 1966. In the linked video to the opening moments, Don’s camera gives us the first color look at the Academy Awards…

April 17, 1976…Bumped From SNL Debut, Billy Crystal Returns Exclusive Eyewitness Account…Billy Crystal & The Debut Of SNL As SNL fans, and history buffs know, Billy Crystal was scheduled to appear on the debut show, but he didn’t, and there has always been a lot of speculation as to just exactly what happened that…

April 17, 1967…”The Joey Bishop Show” Debuts On ABC Above, we see the opening of the show with, a wide shot of the GE PE 250 cameras on the stage at 1313 Vine street. There is more on these great facilities in the photos, so click on them. Joey’s announcer and sidekick was Regis…