TV History

Who Knew? NASA Got An Emmy For It’s Pictures From The Moon! 45 years ago today, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon. They also sent back live television pictures and Mr. Aldrin became the first lunar cameraman. Five years ago, the TV Academy presented NASA with…

The Pride Of NBC Burbank…Studio 1 Here’s a look at this gigantic studio from around 1955. Studio 1 is 42′ feet high, 119′ long and 89′ wide with 10,591 square feet of floor space. Studio 3 next door is almost the same size but is one foot shorter coming in at 118′ in length.…

Remembering James Garner…. Sad to report that Mr. Garner died at his home last night in Los Angeles at the age of 86. http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/james-garner-of-maverick-rockford-files-dies-at-86-1201265361/ Source

Ultra Rare Photo & Video…In More Than One Way It’s not often that we (1) find a color shot from television’s black and white days, or (2) get a great look out into CBS Studio 33 from the control room, but what we have here goes even deeper. At first glance, you may think…

‘Bonanza’…September 12, 1959 – January 16, 1973 In the photo below we see Pernell Roberts, as Adam Cartwright, filming an episode from the first season, which was almost the last season. Initially the show aired opposite CBS blockbuster ‘Perry Mason’ and the ratings were so bad that NBC wanted to kill the show, but…

45 Years Ago Today…Apollo 11 Heads For The Moon: Day 4 Here is the fourth of eight daily articles written for Eyes Of A Generation by Jodie Peeler on this historic event. Enjoy and share! ______________________________________________________ As noted a few days ago, “Broadcasting” Magazine estimated the cost of the networks’ Apollo 11 coverage at…

Stop The Presses! NBC/RCA TK43 History Rewrite! Thanks to Martin Perry, here’s more on the mysterious appearance and disappearance of the RCA TK43s at NBC New York. The article is from “Broadcasting Magazine” dated November 21, 1966. This would be coverage of the Senate and House elections midway through LBJ’s first elected term. I…

Remembering Elaine Stritch… Did you know she was the original Trixie Norton on ‘The Honeymooners’? Below is the only photo of her in that roll on November 12, 1951. That episode was the fourth ever Honeymooners sketch and was done on ‘The Dumont Cavalcade Of Stars’, which was hosted by Jackie Gleason. This sketch…

45 Years Ago Today…Apollo 11 Heads For The Moon: Day 3 Here is the third of eight daily articles written for Eyes Of A Generation by Jodie Peeler on this historic event. Enjoy and share! _____________________________________________________ For most of the United States, live coverage of Apollo 11’s journey was easily accomplished through the same…

July 15, 1968…’One Life To Live’ Debuts On ABC In its 43 year history, ‘One LIfe To Live’ covered a lot of ground in it’s plot lines, but none were more extraordinary than the “heaven” scenes done in 1987, 2008 and 2012. Above is our friend Howie Zeidman (left) and Rich Westlein on camera…

July 17, 1955…Disneyland Opens: Behind The Scenes Video 61 years ago today, what was then television’s largest remote took place at the Disneyland Grand Opening. Here is the ultra rare, 14 minute, behind the scenes film produced by ABC to commemorate the massive 29 camera, live broadcast. This video ends with the narrator saying…

July 17, 1955…Disneyland Opens, Part 1 In Part 2, I’ll post an ultra rare ABC film shot that day on how the largest remote in television’s short history was done, but first, here are a couple of rare color shots from the Disneyland opening sent to us by our friend Mike Clark. Who knew…

45 Years Ago Today…Apollo 11 Heads For The Moon: Day 2 Here is the second of eight daily articles written for Eyes Of A Generation by Jodie Peeler on this historic event. Enjoy and share! _____________________________________________________ On July 17, 1969 Apollo 11 was coasting toward its historic rendezvous with the Moon. With all the…

45 Years Ago Today…Apollo 11 Leaves For The Moon: Day 1 With these daily articles written for us by Jodie Peeler, we’ll follow the story of two missions…the one “in the air” and the one “on the air”. She has done a beautiful job of capturing the details and emotion of that time with…

Lightning Strikes Twice! A Personal Note… Meet Teddy! Here he is on the left with me and JJ on Saturday…the day he came home to live with us. As many of you know, I lost my great little buddy Jack about three weeks ago. I’d raised him from a puppy and we had twelve…

Surprise Follow Up…CBS Studio 72/Reeves Teletape In response to yesterday’s post about CBS Color Studio 72, which later became Reeves Teletape, WNBC’s Geoffrey DeVoe sent this interesting video. Here’s Tony Randall on WNBC’s ‘Live At Five’ with Jack Cafferty talking about the television production space shortage in New York in the early 80s. Randall’s…

You’ve Come A Long Way Baby… With the 1960 election piece just posted, this photo of a stagehand changing the tote board numbers by hand popped into my head. These photos are from ABC’s 1952 election coverage which was pretty much a landslide for Dwight Eisenhower over Adlai Stevenson. This year computers would play…

The CBS Color Girl… NBC had auburn haired Marie McNamara in New York as television’s first and original “color girl”, but Television City had the pretty, blond Ann Palmer. Adjusting the primary colors was one thing, but getting the fleshtones right was critical. Both Ann and Marie spent hundreds of hours posing for the…

Ultra Rare…Behind The ‘Laugh In’ Joke Wall, Photo & Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFksUB9gWyk First, there is an “extra special” blooper at the 1:30 mark of this great ‘Laugh In’ joke wall blooper reel. By the way, the first person you see is Producer George Schlatter, with the bead. This is the only known photo of this…