TV History

NBC’s Color Kinescopes…The Lenticular Color Film Process First, this Ernie Kovacs color clip is most likely NOT a lenticular color kinescope, but…it could be, and we will discuss that. This is a segment from the Ernie Kovacs “Saturday Color Carnival” show dated January 19th, 1957. It was also used in the NBC 50th Anniversay…

January 13, 1928…America’s First Public Television Demonstration On this day in 1928, Ernst F. W. Alexanderson gave the first public demonstration of mechanical television in the U.S., from General Electric’s lab in Schenectady NY. Farnsworth would demonstrate his electronic version in September of this year, and Francis Jenkins had done this in Washington DC…

HUGE AND FUN TRICK SHOT SURPRISES From The 1920s!!! If you are like me, seeing Harold Lloyd hanging from this clock always gives me chills and makes me wonder about his sanity, BUT…now we know how they did this, and more very slick effects. As you scroll down the page, a half dozen or…

Rare! Behind The Scenes…Shooting “Batman” First Episode January 12, 1966…’Batman’ Debuts On ABC There are two rare video pieces here for you to see including this embedded clip (no audio) of a location shoot of a scene from the first episode with Frank Gorshin and Bert Ward. In this second clip, we see the…

History’s First Marriage Of Recorded Sight And Sound…Circa 1894 From the inception of motion pictures, various inventors have attempted to unite sight and sound, but Edison did it first. The Edison Company is known to have experimented with this as early as the fall of 1894 under the supervision of W. K. L. Dickson…

January 10, 1949…RCA Introduces The 45 RPM Record I was 8 when I got my first record player, and the first two 45s I ever had were Bobby Day’s “Rock’n Robbin” and Andy Griffith’s “What It Was, Was Football”. Do you remember your first 45s? Here is Charles Osgood’s story on the debut from…

1939 Hollywood Tour…The Studios, Movies & People Making News The great “March Of Time” newsreel archives give us a look at Tinseltown as it was in July of 1939. The studio bosses are all here as are shots from the sets of “Gone With The Wind”, “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” and more! Everybody…

SPECIAL NBC NY STUDIOS HISTORY…FIRST HAND ACCOUNT This article includes A MUST READ, FIRST HAND ACCOUNT from one of NBC’s veteran cameramen, Frank Vierling. His story starts 68 years ago today, on his first day, January 6, 1949, and gives us details of the little known NBC mobile camera units used INSIDE 30 Rockefeller…

January 4, 1960…”Tonight” Show Moves To NBC Studio 6B By far, the most famous shows to originate from 6B are ‘The Texaco Star Theater’ and the ‘Tonight’ shows with Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and now, Jimmy Fallon. ‘Tonight’ of course started with Steve Allen and Jack Paar originating the show at The Hudson Theater,…

January 2, 1952…”Today” Show’s Full Staff Reports To Work at 4 AM To get everyone acclimated to their new early morning schedules and ready for the Monday, January 14 debut, all writers, talent, technical and production staffers were required to report for work at 4 AM on Wednesday, January 2, 1952. Their new home…

Something Borrowed and Something Blue, Red and Green January 1, 1954 was the first time the new RCA/NBC color trucks were used. Unlike the black and white RCA Tele Mobile units from the ’30s, which had a camera/switching truck and a transmitter truck, both color trucks were camera trucks, with the signal feed handled…

I THINK THIS SAYS IT ALL! Thanks to our friends in cold Times Square that helped us ring out 2016, and our friends in warm Pasadena who’ll help us ring in a rosy 2017! Happy New Year! -Bobby Ellerbee Source

December 30, 1953…The First Color TV Sets Go On Sale On December 17, 1953, the FCC approved the National Television System Committee’s recommendation of the RCA Dot Sequential color system. With the New Year’s Day Rose Parade just ahead, RCA pulled all the stops to broadcast it in color, and set up 20 target…

December 30, 1963…’Let’s Make A Deal’ Debuts On NBC Here is the head of the pilot episode, complete with a TK41 in the foreground of the intro shot at NBC Burbank May 25, 1963. I think this is Studio 3. The original edition of the show was a daytime series that ran on NBC,…

By Request…The Creation Of The CBS Eye Logo Told in a way only Charles Osgood can tell it, here is the story of how the iconic CBS logo came to be for Joe Berdosco in Nashville. If you have stories or subjects you would like to know more about, let me know in the…

The World’s First Four Television Mobile Units…1931 Through 1937 Thanks to a note from friend, camera collector and author Dicky Howett in the UK, I need to clarify a bit of early TV history regrading the first mobile units, and in this revision, include the just discovered Berlin Olympics unit. Although RCA’s new twin…