TV History

Meet The Cameramen Of ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ From left to right are Kevin Cavallini, Allen Brown and John Curtin shown here with the show’s great host, Charles Osgood. Every Sunday morning for 35 years, since day one in 1979, Allen Brown has been there and has been with CBS for 40 years. Later today,…

In Case You Missed It…Another Look At The Vidifont System On Saturday, I posted the first article on television’s first character generator, but here is a much more illustrated article on Vidifont that I think you’ll like. Thanks to James Shea for sharing this in the Comment section a day or so ago. By…

Seems Like Only Yesterday, And It WAS! SNL Rehearsal Shot Here’s Chris Rock with Jay Pharoah between scenes yesterday in NBC Studio 8H. Last nights show was great, Rock and Prince rocked the house! That’s Louis Delli Paoli and Bob Mancari behind them on the Chapman Electra arm with John Pinto in the bucket…

On A Related Note…1954; The Year In Color At NBC Just a month before NBC Brooklyn Studio I went live in September of 1954, the NBC Color Caravan wrapped up a three month sojourn through the midwest and mid Atlantic states, but that was just a small part of a year brimming with color…

A Rare And Detailed Look At NBC’s Brooklyn Studios…Part 1 of 2 For me, these new photos and information have cleared up a lot of confusion about these famous and historic film and television studios. I hope they will do the same for you. Here are two annotated aerial views of the property and…

Ultra Rare! Network Telop Cards…Cica 1955 From the Gady Reinhold Collection, here are nine opaque cards used in the Gray Telop machines of the day. How many times in the 50s did you see this iconic CBS cloud logo between shows? Until I heard of the telop machines, I always thought is was a…

NBC Brooklyn Studios History Coming, But For Now…Check This Out! 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…

Before Character Generation, There Was This…Then Came Vidifont The first electronic graphics machine used in US television production was the CBS Vidifont system. As told by the man that developed it, Stanley Baron, here is the story of how it came to be. https://ethw.org/First-Hand:Inventing_the_Vidifont:_the_first_electronics_graphics_machine_used_in_television_production Before 1968, television graphics were either movable letters on a…

November 1, 1960…Rare! The Photo And Video, Martin And Sinatra Before the 1965-1974 ‘Dean Martin Show’ on NBC, there was the 1957-1961 ‘Dean Martin Show’ on NBC. Both were done in Studio 4 at NBC Burbank, but that’s where the similarity ends…sort of. The ’57-’61 shows were specials and only aired two or three…

October 31, 1950…Trick Or Treat? My Parents Would Say, BOTH! Yep, today’s my birthday and at 3:20 this afternoon, I’ll be 64 years old. I’m not sure, but that probably makes me the oldest student at The University Of Georgia. Most don’t know, but in August, I started back to school at my old…

Halloween Special #5…One Minute Of Movie Magic That Lasts A Lifetime This is perhaps one of most amazing transformation shots ever done, especially when you consider the date was 1943! Lon Chaney Jr’s face is in constant motion, yet the time lapse makeup application process by Jack Pierce is seamless as he becomes The…

In Case You Missed This…The Oldest Known ‘Tonight’ Color Clip During yesterday’s camera comparisons, Gary Walters reposted this ultra rare clip which was restored by David Crosthwait and his expert crew at DC Video in LA. Although it’s a dub of a 2″ low band quad tape, it’s still very good and shows off…

October 31, 1965…’The Ed Sullivan Show’ Goes Color Although I can’t locate a clip of the debut color show from CBS Studio 50, I have the next best thing…a clip from a week later on November 7, 1965. Starting in the late 50’s, Sullivan had done color shows from time to time, but they…

October 31, 1953…NBC’s First Network Colorcast: “Carmen” In essence, the opera “Carmen” was broadcast nationally in black and white with the color burst removed. BUT, the color broadcast was fed via closed circuit to viewing parties in New York, possibly Washington and to Chicago. The colorcast was live from NBC’s first and only color…

I think this is my all time favorite TK41 color shot. My like for this may be influenced by the art of the shot and the set, and even though this is not very colorful, it shows how great the black registration was on this camera. I would have loved to have been at…

To me, the best examples of the great pictures the TK41 made are captured on The Andy Williams Christmas Specials on NBC. This is my second favorite clip of their great color. Wait till you see my favorite which is up next! Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee Source

Halloween Special #3…Universal’s Master Of Makeup, Jack Pierce We said a brief hello to Jack Pierce yesterday, but today, we’ll get a full half hour of his mastery. Pierce created the most iconic and memorable monster looks ever to hit the screen, and they live on till this day. Did you know that the…

The GE PE 20…A Witness To History In Dallas The Broadcast Engineering ad here is from March of 1962 and is part of the introduction of GE’s new PE 20 monochrome camera. Nationally, not many broadcasters used GE equipment, but there was an unusually large market for GE product in the southwest, and Texas…

October 30, 1931…NBC Begins Work On Empire State Tower On this day in 1931, NBC began putting a TV transmitter on top of the Empire State Building. The first experimental TV broadcast from the building was on December 22, 1931. I don’t think the broadcast tower atop the building’s dirigible mooring mast was added…

Halloween Special #1…Rare Frankenstein Color Footage This is a short color home movie clip shot by Boris Karloff’s wife who took this on the set of ‘The Son Of Frankenstein’ in December of 1939. In it, we see Karloff goofing and playing with Universal’s top monster makeup man, Jack Pierce. There will be much…