TV History

A Treasure For SNL Fans…Save And Bookmark This Site http://snltranscripts.jt.org/ This is the most complete and interesting ‘Saturday Night Live’ sites I’ve ever seen. If you want a full account of the show’s history, you’ll find it here. Enjoy and Share! – Bobby Ellerbee Saturday Night Live Transcripts Saturday Night Live Transcripts contains over…

Exclusive New Photos From NBC Brooklyn…3 of 4 Thanks to Peter Katz, here is another of four photos taken on the set of ‘Amahl And The Night Visitors’ at NBC Brooklyn. This was first performed on December 24, 1951 in Studio 8H where it was broadcast live as the debut production of the ‘Hallmark…

Ultra Rare…Color Footage Of The Mouseketeers Debut On October 3, 1955 ‘The Mickey Mouse Club’ debuted on ABC, but the nation first met the Mouseketeers in the live broadcast of the opening of Disneyland in July. Here is recently discovered color footage of the rehearsal of the July 17 broadcast cut into the b/w…

October 2, 1946…Network Television’s First Soap Debuts…Or Did It? ‘Faraway Hill’ debuted on The Dumont network on this date 68 years ago today and is considered by many to be the first soap opera on network television, in that the shows were produced and broadcast on more than one television station. In this case…

A New Angle For ‘NBC Nightly News’…Studio 3B Changes We’ve had some questions on this lately, so here’s what I know about the changes on ‘Nightly News’. In the top photo, we see the location of the news desk as it has been for a few years now…at the top end of Studio 3B.…

Exclusive New Photos From NBC Brooklyn…2 of 4 Thanks to Peter Katz, here is another of four photos taken on the set of ‘Amahl And The Night Visitors’ at NBC Brooklyn. After posting the first one yesterday and mentioning the show was finally recorded in color in 1963, we found out that someone accidentally…

A Story Of TV History Treasure…LOST For a year and a half on what was then WRCA, Bill Cullen hosted a local (New York) fifteen minute television show called ‘Inside NBC’…here is a description of just a few of the shows. It would be fantastic to see all of this backstage stuff, BUT…sadly, as…

October 1, 1952…’This Is Your Life’ Debuts On NBC ‘This Is Your Life’ had its genesis in radio as a good natured gesture on the ‘Truth or Consequences’ show in 1946. General Omar Bradley asked Ralph Edwards to do something to help returning World War II veterans, especially paraplegics. He said they were depressed…

October 1, 1962…’Tonight’ With Johnny Carson Debuts At the clip link above is the audio of the first 3 minutes of the debut show with Groucho Marx introducing Johnny. The video has been lost but below, we have the next best thing…rare pictures from that night! The guests that night in NBC’s Studio 6B…

Exclusive New Photos From NBC Brooklyn…1 of 4 Thanks to Peter Katz, here is the first of four photos taken on the set of ‘Amahl And The Night Visitors’ at NBC Brooklyn. If you remember from the article here a few weeks back, this was a one act light opera NBC had commissioned. It…

3 Fantastic Dick Van Dyke Set Shots… We’ve seen the bedroom shot before but the other two living room shots are brand new. The large one here gives us an “Ah ha moment” as we finally see the kitchen set to the right of the living room, and if you look closely you can…

Anyone Know Who Made This Pedestal? 2021 UPDATE: It is a GE pedestal. You don’t see many of these but there were a few around. This is built along the same lines as the old Dumont “milk wagon” pedestals used under their Iconoscope cameras. I’m pretty sure this is an electric ped with a…

How’s This For A Flashback? Here’s an ad for the first ever episode of ‘Saturday Night Live’ and goes a long way in clearing up some confusion in the comments section from last week. As I wrote then, Tom Snyder did a special 90 minute Saturday version of ‘Tomorrow’ with Jerry Lewis to cover…

Ding, Dong The Witch Is Dead! GE Sign Finally Coming Down… Most will be glad to know that work began a few days back to take down the GE sign at 30 Rock…soon NBC’s proud peacock will take it’s rightful place here. Thanks to Anthony Quintero for this shot of the work in progress.…

The Heart Of The Magnetic Field Problems For CBS Studio 50 In one of today’s earlier post about CBS ordering the Maconi Mark VII color cameras, I mentioned the the legendary magnetic field problems they had in Studio 50 and also, Studio 52. Circled in red is the heart of the problem. That’s where…

Geeky, But Interesting Camera History…CBS And Marconi Color Being born on Halloween, things in history that happen on that day intrigue me and here are two biggies. On October 31, 1965, CBS Studio 50 made is debut color broadcast of ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ with 5 Norelco PC60s. The very next year, on October…

In Case You Missed It…Color Video Tape Comparison To Kinescope Obviously color makes a big difference, but so does the quality of videotape over kine. This is the “laughing cameraman” sketch that I posted yesterday in a side by side comparison with some neat special effects inserts. Thanks to Joao Antônio Franz dos Santos…