TV History

TeleTales #63…Groovy! KHJ At The Beach, 1967 Thanks to Dave Miller, here’s a home movie shot at Santa Monica Beach in ’67 showing the taping of “Groovy” which was a local teen dance show. Notice the big silver connector on the side of the new Norlco PC60s…that is a converter box that takes the…

TeleTales #60…The CBS Censors And The Smothers Brothers Thanks to Randy West, here is a perfect example of the kind of censorship and restraint CBS applied to Tom and Dick Smothers. Can you say petty? The bigger issue was politics and Tom and Dick discuss that at the link above. The best discussion on…

TeleTales #59…By Request, The Andy Griffith Opening This rare photo is one of the most shared images ever posted here, and to answer the many requests to see it again, here it is. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee Source

TeleTales #58…Hauling Ass Into History! A Dream Of Jeannie? What does this picture of a donkey in the backseat have to do with television history? Actually, quite a lot. This is a publicity shot for a 1964 movie called “The Brass Bottle” which costarred Barbara Eden. Although she did not play the genie that…

TeleTales #57…A Two Bird, One Stone Surprise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vggMCiJfs&ab_channel=vaimusic First, at the link is a song that many people think was a Beatles original, but it’s not…it’s from “The Music Man”. The performance is by opera star Barbra Cook on “The Bell Telephone Hour” which began April 29, 1940 on NBC Radio and was heard…

TeleTales #56…Network Television’s First News Program In 1947, CBS began experimenting with a news show which was broadcast on Saturday night, but soon afterward they added a Wednesday night edition too. As far as I know, this was newsreel show with no on camera talent, but there was a live announcer narrating. On May…

TeleTales #55…VIII Winter Olympics From Squaw Valley In February of 1960, CBS televised the events live from California in glorious black and white, but at least by then, there was video tape. As a matter of fact, this is one of the first times videotape was used to help officials officials judge an event.…

RCA’s First Experimental Color Television Cameras By request, here is more on RCA’s first color efforts. Shown here are the first two RCA color cameras made. The photo was taken at NBC/RCA’s Wardman Park Studio in Washington DC around 1949. The camera on the left has the lens cowl removed and notice that the…

Just For Fun…”The Frank Sinatra Show”, ABC 1957 From October of ’57 through June of ’58, ABC broadcast this show, usually live, from the El Captain Theater in Los Angeles, which was also home to “Queen For A Day”. Notice above, I said “usually live”…actually only a few of the shows were supposed to…

NBC Tour Time #2…30 Rock As Only David Letterman Can Show It Just for fun, here a clip from around 1985, just before the GE sale, with Dave bring out some of the many selling points. I particularly like the trip to the Tom Brokaw news set;>) Thanks to David Crosthwait for the clip.…

Guess Who’s Network Broadcasting’s Longest Running Host… Bob Barker is a close second with 34⅔ years years on “The Price Is Right”, but the winner and still champion is Don McNeil with a 35½ tenure as host of a network entertainment program. Counting only television, Barker wins, but when you add radio to the…

TeleTales #53…Another New Rarity! “Life Begins At 80” This is a beautiful shot of Dumont’s main studio at the Wanamakers Department Store location. It wasn’t always this dressy, but this special set was built to entice the show’s producers Jack Barry and Dan Enright away from NBC where “Life Begins At 80″ had aired…

TeleTales #52…NEW, ULTRA RARE! The Kraft Cameraman Before “The Kraft Television Theater” debuted on a regular basis from NBC Studio 8G in May of 1947, it had been done occasionally from Studio 3H in 1945 with their big silver Iconoscope cameras. I think this super rare picture of the opening shot display was taken…

TeleTales # 51…NEW, ULTRA RARE! “Texaco Star Theater” This is just amazing! I have studied this very closely and believe this to be, if not the debut show, at least a photo taken in the first month of “The Texaco Star Theater” starring Milton Berle. This is the ONLY behind the scenes photo I…

TeleTales #50…Double Header History In The Making This is the story of the first MLB night game broadcast and…a little more. The article from June of 1941 also gives us what I think is the first ever look at the RCA Model 1846 Orthicon camera. It has been hard to get a date on…

TeleTales #48…Take A Minute To Look And Think About This This 1944 ad from RCA gives us a few highlights of television’s history and brings to mind a question that is often asked here…what did television do during World War II? Basically it shrank and took a back seat to the war effort, but…

TeleTales #47…You’ve Come A Long Way Baby! Given all of the Super Bowl coverage, I thought a look back at 1960 state of the art mobile production was in order. This is the new RCA twin truck unit recently purchased by Los Angeles based Glenn-Armistead Productions. The production truck (bottom) carried 4 RCA TK11/31…

TeleTales #46…More Behind The Scenes Super Bowl Reports When you click this article, notice to the right are a half dozen more written Sunday about other technical aspects and operations, and below that in the Sportswire section are even more stories on some of the new equipment used at the game. Enjoy and share!…