TV History

The ESPN/Chapman Dualie…Last Night In New York In case you’ve never seen this, here is the coolest sideline ride in the business. This two level configuration is around four years old…the original version had both cameras mounted on a T bar and debuted around six years ago. The Metlife photo is from our friend…

WOW! Roddy McDowall’s Home Movies…’Planet Of The Apes’ Thanks to Mike Clark for sending this amazing link to us. The first 8 minutes show Roddy being transformed into “Cornelius” in the makeup trailer at 20th Century Fox, but then he takes a helicopter to the set which gives us a great look at the…

A Rare Look At The First Ikegami Color Studio Camera…The TK 301 It’s good thing our Australian pals had a few too many pints one night in the early 70s, otherwise, we would not have had what I think is only the second video sighting of the first Ikegami color studio camera. This is…

‘Squidbillies’…Season 8 Debuts On Adult Swim Tonight At 11:45 This is my show! I am the voice of Sheriff on ‘Squidbilles’…television’s fourth most watched animated series. That’s a pretty good trick considering the other three are on Fox tonight in primetime! Since our demo is mostly men 18 to 34, most of you have…

September 21, 1970…’ABC Monday Night Football’ Debuts Most think this was a marriage made in heaven, but infact, it was really more like a shotgun wedding. During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during prime time for a greater TV audience. While the…

September 21, 1957…’Perry Mason’ Debuts On CBS I have two rare videos to share with you on ‘Perry Mason’. The first one (linked above) is Raymond Burr’s screentest for the lead role. This looks like a video tape, but could be a kinescope which was most likely shot at the CBS Television City. Next…

September 21, 1948…Berle Named Permanent Host, ‘Texaco Star Theater’ On June 8, 1948, there were two major debuts at NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza and they both happened in the same place at the same time as ‘The Texaco Star Theater’ was broadcast live from Studio 6B. This was the first broadcast from 6B after…

NBC Studio 6A…The Meredith Viera Show It’s taken over a year, but it’s finally on the air in syndication. The only way I can see it in the Atlanta market is to DVR it…it comes on at 2:30 AM here on WSB, an ABC affiliate. Oddly, WSB runs two episodes of ‘Dr. Phil’ each…

Home Of ‘Queen For A Day’…Moulin Rouge, 6230 W. Sunset Blvd You can see the main room of The Moulin Rouge in the first few seconds of this video. NBC carried the show weekday afternoons at 1:30 from 1956 till 1960 when it moved to ABC and stayed on till ’64. ‘Queen for a…

The Amazing Back Story Of ABC’s Vine Street Theater…1313 Vine Street Did you know this was originally the home of The Don Lee – Mutual Network? Or, that this is the first place Johnny Carson ever went on network television? The building was originally built in 1948 as a radio and television studio facility…

Ever See One Of These? This Is The GE PE 25 Color Camera There are not many photos of this camera, but thanks to David Crosthwait at DC Video, we have a new black and white photo taken at KCOP in Los Angeles. The color photo (the only one we know of) shows our…

In Case You Missed This…ABC Prospect, 1950 And Today A week or so back, I posted this shot from what we think is from ‘The Marshal At Gunsight Pass’…a 1950 western themed kids show done live Saturday afternoons for ABC’s west coast stations. It ran for 22 weeks and was pulled due to the…

Dinah Shore With The Colonial Theater’s RCA TK40s…1957 Continuing on the theme from the previous post of Peter Katz photo from The Colonial Theater, here is Dinah Shore with these rare cameras. Notice the first camera we see had no vents on the viewfinder. This was how the first RCA TK40s were made. The…

Adelphi Theater Stage Is Now…New York Hilton’s Grand Ballroom If you ever want to conjure up the ghosts of ‘The Honeymooners’, make your way to the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton as that is where the stage of the Adelphi Theater was located. After I posted the rare new photo from Peter…

‘Wheel Of Fortune’…Behind The Scenes, 1988 Part 2 This is great! We get to see how the letter board works and more of the TK47s in Studio 4 in Burbank, plus the M G Kelly announce opening with a classic RCA mic. In the latter half of this, we see Vanna and Director Dick…

ULTRA RARE! For The First Time Anywhere! Although there are two similar photos of Jackie Gleason’s ‘Honeymooners’ being shot by these Dumont Electronicams, this one has never been seen before. It was taken by our new friend Peter J. Katz at the Adelphi Theater in November of 1955. The episode being filmed is Episode…

‘Wheel Of Fortune’…Behind The Scenes, 1988 Part 1 Tomorrow, I’ll post part two which follows the show to New York for a week of taping there, but for now…welcome to NBC Burbank Studio 4, which was also home to Dean Martin. The cameras are RCA TK47s and we get a good look at the…