TV History

Follow Up…NBC 3rd Floor, Original 1933 Floor Plan I thought some of the detail I laid out in today’s first post could use some graphics support, so here is the 1933 floorplan with the studios marked. As you look at this, here are a few thing to keep in mind…MSNBC’s main daytime studio is…

A Rare Sight And Some Detailed New Studio History…NBC, 30 Rock This is a rare aerial view of The RCA Building and circled, the 11 story NBC Studio wing on West 49th Street at 6th Avenue. Notice the bottom of the circle touches a building across the street…that is The Center Theater, or was…

The Start Of The ABC Television Network…A Short Primer Since a lot of us are a bit rusty on ABC’s television roots, here’s a thumbnail sketch. By the way, the photo is of Bob King…the first cameraman hired at ABC Hollywood. On April 19, 1948, the ABC Television Network began its broadcasts on its…

This is the start of the remote/robotic studio camera. We can all “thank” Evershed Power Optics in the UK for this “brilliant” idea. As the story goes, BBC management let it be known that they were trying to cut staffing costs and low and behold, EPO stepped up to the plate. These photos are…

The Kaufman Astoria Studio Stages…You Won’t Believe How Big They Are! Until I took a good look at this, I didn’t realize how huge Kaufman Astoria was. Until you look, you won’t either! Be sure and click on each of the stage listings for the full effect. The Porsche in the middle of Stage…

UPDATE TO STORY March 2021 For years, I had wondered if any of these fantastic stage cranes were left. The only one I knew of was in The UK, but just last week, someone sent me this photo of a 30B in Milwaukee. That I know of, this is the only one left in…

October 23, 1956…Videotape Makes Its Network Debut On NBC 58 years ago today, a two and a half minute video taped song from ‘Your Hit Parade’ star Dorothy Collins was inserted into ‘The Jonathan Winters Show’. NBC engineers in New York wanted to see if the viewing public could tell the difference from the…

Sightseeing #3…The Dean Martin Show? Close, But No Cigar! Thanks to Chuck Pharis, here is a photo of the recreated Dean Martin set, which I think was used on one of those half hour pitches for Martin CD collections. Although the set is fake, the RCA TK41 is very real and rare too! It…

Sightseeing #2…’Today’ Show, Set Tours And Ikegami HK322s It’s not often that we get to see the Ikegami cameras at NBC, or a complete new set change on a major show, but in this video we get both. We start with the Friday, September 7, 1990 sign off from Studio 8H and the old…

Sightseeing #1…’Another World’, NBC Brooklyn 1990 Thanks to Anthony Torre, here’s a something we don’t often see…NBC’s Ikegami cameras. This was at the Brooklyn Studios and I think that’s an HK 322, but I’m not positive. With this in mind, up next is a 1990 trip to ‘Today’ and a look at their Ikegamis.…

October 22, 1939…The First Ever Pro Football Telecast 75 years ago today, the relationship between professional football and television began when The National Broadcasting Company earned a spot in history by televising a pro football game. Only 22 days before, NBC had televised the first ever college game on September 30th. A crowd of…

Inside CBS Studios 41 And 42…Grand Central Terminal, Then And Now In November of 1937, CBS was near completion of their first television transmitter on the 72nd and 73rd floors of the Chrysler Building. Across the street in Grand Central Terminal, work was underway on the new CBS television studios. The studio space was…

What A Night! September 27, 1954…’Caesar’s Hour’ & ‘Tonight’ Debut A week or so back, we touched on this but here’s something new. Thanks to Maureen Carney, here is the ad that ran that day introducing not only ‘Caesar’s Hour’, but the rest of the television line up that Monday night, including the debut…

Follow Up…NBC’s Studio 3H And 5F, Historic Photos In the Guided Tour of Studio 3H I just posted, we saw the control room in action, but here is a closeup of the video shading board that was in use in 3H in 1937 and the information on the back of the photo. A few…

ULTRA RARE! Meet NBC’s FIRST CAMERAMAN…Albert W. Protzman Late yesterday afternoon, I stumbled across this incredibly rare piece of television history in a happy accident, while researching the locations for the guided tour post just before this. In the coming days, I will share what I learned from Mr. Protzman’s writings, but for now…let’s…

SNL Classic! Behind The Scenes Of “The Continental” Sketches This past Saturday night, the SNL classic episode that aired at 10 PM was the April 8, 2000 episode with Christopher Walken as host and the big sketch from this show was the “Cowbell” scene with Will Ferrell. But, whenever Walken hosts, he does a…

Seems Like Only Yesterday…And It Was! CBS Sunday Morning… Thanks to Craig Wilson for these shots from yesterday’s show from Studio 45. Notice the three camera shot…Studio 45 is so big it hosts two shows…’CBS Sunday Morning’ and ‘Inside Edition’. Behind the three cameras you see one of the green cyclorama curtains and the…

The First Two RCA Orthicon Cameras…Early Indoor Test, 1940 These photos are opaque slides from a homestyle stereoscopic viewer. I think what we are seeing here are the first two RCA Orthicon cameras being tested. Notice there is (1) no focus control anywhere. In earlier posts today, we saw both the panhandle focus and…

The RCA Orthicon Camera On Location…1945 While we are on the Orthicon Camera, here are a few interesting pictures of it in use in outside broadcasts. There are two photo here from the 1945 Macy’s Parade…one of the camera shooting down and one taken from the street showing the camera on the balcony of…