TV History

John Vassos and RCA ‘Television’ If you look where Milton’s hand is, you are also seeing the hand of one of America’s first industrial designers…John Vassos. The ‘Television’ and ‘Color Television’ badges that adorn all the early RCA cameras and telecine equipment was designed by Mr. Vassos. The classic look and style of the…

Compatible Color TV Announcement…December 19, 1953 ‘Your Show Of Shows’ was NBC’s top rated show and that’s where they chose to make this announcement on Saturday night, December 19, 1953. The decision had come down from the FCC that Thursday afternoon and capped a multi year court battle which pitted the CBS backed Field…

Great WGN Photo Album…Over Two Dozen Rare Photos Since April 5, 1948, WGN has been one of the few independent broadcasters in the US, but has done well. From sports to kids shows, and everything in between, WGN has covered a lot of ground and you’ll see a lot of that history here. Enjoy…

Saved From The Cutting Room Floor…”If I Only Had A Heart” Few know that Buddy Ebsen was the original TIn Man in ‘The Wizard Of Oz’. Actually he was cast as The Scarecrow, but with the directors permission, he and Ray Bolger swapped roles. Only a few photos and a this super rare recording…

‘The Munsters’…Unaired Color Pilot And Some Surprises! What do ‘The Musters’ and ‘Leave It To Beaver’ have in common? The two men that produced ‘The Munsters’…Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher…that’s what. They created ‘Leave It To Beaver’ and before that, wrote over 1,500 episodes of ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy. Here’s another surprise…the show only ran…

Pretty Maids All In A Row… Last month I posted the other four pix from this ABC event at Pebble Beach in the late 60s, but just found this fifth photo I had forgotten about. These are the dozen TK41Cs that Roone Arlidge ordered for ABC in 1966. RCA had orders for a dozen…

The Ultimate Mailbox For A Television Guy… A friend in Indiana is in the used broadcast gear business and has put some of his obsolete inventory to good use. Enjoy and share! Source

‘Queen For A Day’ Here is the ABC Hollywood crew for the show with a few of the iconic white ABC TK30s around 1949. One of the show’s telecast locations was the Earl Carroll Theater on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood and that’s where this photo was taken. In 1953, it was renamed The Moulin…

‘Person To Person’…Edward R Murrow Visits Robert F Kennedy Murrow’s fifth season of ‘Person To Person’ debuted the evening of September 13, 1957 at 10:30. His first guest of the new season was Julie London, from her North Hollywood home. The final fifteen minutes came from the Kennedy home in McLean, Virginia where a…

July 31, 1995…The Circuit Is Reversed As Disney Buys ABC Did you know that in the beginning, ABC invested in Disney? In the early 1950’s, Walt Disney sought corporate sponsorship for his Mickey Mouse themed amusement park. Desperate to trump its more established competitors, the American Broadcasting Company, stepped in as one of Disneyland’s…

Sports Television History…April 17, 1965 In the photo, we see Leo Durocher welcoming Jackie Robinson to television in the brand new Shea Stadium. On April 17, 1965, Robinson became the first black network broadcaster for Major League Baseball. In 1965, ABC provided the first-ever nationwide baseball coverage with weekly Saturday broadcasts on a regional…

Now THIS Is RARE! NBC Studio 5HN…TK41 Equipped This is the only photo that I know of that shows a camera in NBC’s 5HN. I’ve searched my files for this photo for weeks and just found it last night. This is the breaking news studio on the 5th floor at NBC NY. After the…

ULTRA RARE! Inside NBC Radio Studio 6B In 1947… Thanks to Alex Cumming, here is the only footage I have ever seen that puts us inside Studio 6B as a radio studio. This is our first and only trip into the stage side control room too. This is the rehearsal, and later the broadcast…

NBC Studio 6A…Before And After, Side By Side These two photos were taken from almost the same spot 18 years apart. This is Studio 6A in 1943 as a radio studio and in 1961 as a television studio. Notice that even after the break of the lighter and darker parts of the stage floor,…

NBC Studio 6A, Circa 1943…New Photos Just In Thanks to Alec Cumming, here are three new unwatermarked photos of NBC Radio Studio 6A just after it was built. As I mentioned yesterday in the 6B stories, 6A is a mirror image of B, with the on stage control room, observation deck window and twin…

And Away We Go! Jackie Gleason’s last show from his longtime home at CBS Studio 50 in New York, aired May 23, 1964. After the summer break, the show debuted from The Miami Beach Convention Center on September 26. Below is a photo of Jackie and well known gossip columnist Hedda Hopper on the…

Can You Guess Who This Violinist Is? Here are a few clues… He is a descendant of Edward Rutledge, a signer of The Declaration of Independence. For many years, he was the conductor of Arthur Godfrey’s orchastra on his radio and television shows and conducted orchestras at several Presidential Inaugurations. He’s known Goldie Hawn…

Dean Martin & Greg Garrison…A Match Made In Showbiz Heaven Thanks to a comment and link shared here yesterday by our friend Andy Rose, we have a unique insight into how Greg Garrison produced and directed ‘The Dean Martin Show’, and later, ‘The Dean Martin Roasts’. http://www.newsfromme.com/2005/04/01/greg-garrison-r-i-p/ The link above it so an article…

A Leisurely Stroll Down Memory Lane…WBOC, Circa 1964 This video will start at the beginning of the television studios tour, but for engineering and radio fans, the tour starts at the transmitters and radio studios just before this. WBOC is in Salisbury, Maryland and this twenty minute video has a very generous helping of…