TV History

September 27, 1954…’Tonight’ Debuts From The Hudson Theater Happy 60th Birthday To ‘Tonight’! May you have 60 more! At the link are the opening minutes of the very first ‘Tonight’ show with Steve Allen. I’m not going to go into great detail on this as we have spotlighted this show’s history many times here,…

Speaking Of Jerry Lewis…Here’s The Laughing Cameraman Sketch In the last post about the delayed SNL debut, I mentioned that Tom Snyder and his guest Jerry Lewis filled the hole left by the one week push back. Lewis and NBC have a long history going back to ‘The Colgate Comedy Hour’ days of the…

The Television Debut Of The SNL Original Cast…Rare & Surprising! As it turns out, “The Not Ready For Prime Time Players” were not even ready for late night television! Really! Here’s the story… NBC’s new 90 minute, live comedy show ‘Saturday Night Live’ was scheduled to debut at 11:30 on October 4, 1975. The…

I Wonder What Mel Allen Would Have Said About Jeter Last Night? In one of the most surreal and remarkable farewells in Yankee history, leave it to Derek Jeter to deliver the dramatic game-winning hit in the Yankees’ 6-5 triumph over the Baltimore Orioles, just minutes after the Yankees had blown a 3-run lead.…

The Bad Old Days Here’s Red Scare monger Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his favorite position…in front of a camera. Thank God for real newsmen and journalists like Edward R. Murrow who took him on and took him out. Source

The Good Old Days Thank God for Dick Clark and American Bandstand! Boy, how this show changed things in music and for teenagers. Did you watch? Got a story? Source

Shades Of SNL…On The Set Wardrobe Changes In live television, a lot of things happened just on the other side of the set walls. Here at Television City, a door opens to a quick change space where actors could make a change on the set. More often than not, there was no time to…

A Rare Color Photo of CBS Television City Studio 33 Perhaps the most famous of the TVC studios is 33. This is the only one left that has the side wings and the built in theater seating. Here is a shot from behind the lighting directors console from around 1953. As mentioned in the…

A-MAZE-ING: Live Television This NYC shot is a stark contrast to the way live production changed once bigger studios, like the ones at Television City, allowed horizontal staging…sets, all in a row that allowed crews and cameras to move side to side on the stage. This photo could possibly be from the newly converted…

Dumont Kinescope Machines: Quite a rare photo Before there was video tape, tele transcription was done via the kinescope process. Inside the cabinet, behind the panel door there is a cathode ray, or picture tube pointing up so the image can be seen via the mirror box. The image is then recorded by a…

‘The Price Is Right’…One More Behind The Scenes, Timelapse This is not only fast and furious, it was produced and paid for by Drew Carey. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee Source

Short But Sweet…NBC NY & Burbank Quick Shots, Early 70s Thanks to our friend John Schipp, we are able to see a little over a minute’s worth of rare footage inside 30 Rock and Burbank. This is from a behind the scenes episode of NBC’s ‘The Go Show’ which aired briefly around 1973. It…

September 23, 1962…’The Jetsons’ Debuts As First Color For ABC This video clip is quite good as Bill Hanna and Joseph Barbera reminisce about the show. Here’s a little known fact…at the time ABC did not have any color equipment, but NBC did, and that’s how ‘The Jetsons’ got on the air. Each week,…

September 24, 1968…’60 Minutes’ Debuts On CBS https://youtu.be/iRxQI8r8X9E?t=122 Forty six years ago, television history was made when CBS debuted ’60 Minutes’. Below, we see the slate for that first broadcast and at the link above, we have a great farewell to Mike Wallace. At the two minute mark, we enter the ’60 Minutes’ studio…

The Little Known Story Of Nautilus Television… This topic came up in one of the posts yesterday, so here’s the very odd story of Arthur Jones and his 35 RCA cameras and 95 video tape machines. This will start at the 4:56 mark where the television facility is described. As the creator of the…

‘Price Is Right’…Best Ever Behind The Scenes…1 Hour In Studio 33 This is a fantastic trip behind the scenes of this legendary show and covers everything! Notice the cameras are wireless! Yes, there is a cable from the camera head to the yellow and white car batteries on the pedestals, but no floor cables.…

Speaking Of Bob Barker… In the video post just before this, we saw Bob on TPIR set, but this is him in 1970 on the ‘Truth Or Consequences’ set at Metromedia Studios with a Norelco PC70. I would love to have one of these old “captains wheel” Zoom demand controls (that Bob has his…

‘The Price Is Right’…Behind The Scenes, 1982 This is 10 years into Bob Barker’s reign as host and 3 years before the passing of Johnny Olson. Before seeing this, I had never thought of Johnny as a disco dancer…after seeing it, I still don’t but you have to give him an A for effort.…

Directing ‘The Good Wife’…Another Great DGA Article From The Director’s Guild Of America’s “DGA Quarterly” Magazine here is Ann Farmer’s behind the scenes look at one of the best dramatic shows on television. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee Spring 2013 Order in the Court Executive producer-director Brooke Kennedy and her team of directors smoothly…

ABC’s Circle 7 Logo…Which Came First, Chicken Or Egg? ABC’s first corporate phone number was Circle 7 – 5700 and their first offices were at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Remember, ABC came into existence when NBC was forced to sell off the Blue Network, which was more than just radio. 1944, Edward Nobles bought the…