TV History

The First Sign Of Trouble At RCA… Thanks to John Schipp, here is a great photo of Joe Garagiola and painter Leroy Neiman with Art Parker behind the camera…a Norelco camera! In 1964, RCA stopped production of the RCA TK41C and was switching over to the TK42. Fred Himelfarb was head of NBC Labs…

CBS Studio 72…Their Only New York RCA Color Facility In the early 50’s, the network had a Field Sequential Color setup in The Peace Theater at 1280 Fifth Avenue. This was called CBS Color Studio 57. After RCA won the color war, that studio went back to a black and white facility. In early…

Behind The Scenes In The Early Days Of ‘Today’ Until recently, I had always wondered where this ramp on the first ‘Today’ show set went and why they kept it instead of covering it over. Now I know…this was the short cut to the control room in the basement, but there is an interesting…

J Fred Muggs…The Inside Story And Some Funny Monkey Business The story I am about to share is from the book “The Box…An Oral History Of Television, 1920 -1961” by Jeff Kisseloff. I highly recommend it. The first Associate Producer for the ‘Today’ show was Len Safir, who was also in on the planning…

‘Mr. I Magination’…First CBS Childrens Show I must admit, I’m to young to have seen this, but have heard about it. Do you remember this? This show debuted on CBS on April 24, 1949 and ran live as a half-hour weekly show till 1952. In a way, this was the CBS answer to ‘Howdy…

The NBC 8G Studio Cameras…One Of Television’s Rarities NBC’s official grand opening date for 8G, their second ever studio at 30 Rockefeller Plaza is listed as April 22, 1948. Actually, television had been coming from 8G long before that while it was still designated a radio studio. The first show ever to come from…

‘The Patsy’…Marconi Mark VIs and RCA TK60s In Action, Exclusive From the 1964 Jerry Lewis, Paramount release, ‘The Patsy’, here is an edited clip you can only see here. This gives us a good look at two classic cameras in action. The Marconi Mark IV cameras in the first part are owned by KTLA…

History In The Making…The Start Of RCA’s World’s Fair Exhibit In these newly discovered photos. we see from left to right NBC President Lexon Lohr and RCA Chairman David Sarnoff signing the agreement to build the RCA Exhibition Building with Grover Whalen, who was President of the World’s Fair Corporation. I don’t have a…

What A Team! Their First Teaming And How The Met! This may be the first candid photo of Jackie Gleason and Art Carney ever taken. Gleason looks very young here and this was probably taken during his tenure as host of the Dumont ‘Cavalcade Of Stars’. On the Dumont show, Gleason’s regular characters included…

July 11, 1962…Telstar Beams First Transatlantic Television Signal Fifty two years ago today, Telstar went into operation as the world’s first telecommunications satellite. In this excellent video. hosted by NBC newsman Frank Blair, we get the whole story and at the 7:15 mark, Ed Hurlihe takes over the narration with a film of the…

July 10, 1950…’Your Hit Parade’ Comes To Television The video here is from New Year’s Eve of 1955 from NBC Studio 8H and starting at the 2 minute mark, “Memories Are Made Of This” is performed by a singer posing as a stage manager with him getting a ride on the Panoram dolly camera…

Did You Know A Cameraman Has The Most Emmy Nominations? It’s true! His name is Hector Rameriz and he is considered one of the most successful artists in Emmys history. His career spans four decades and yesterday, he received his 72nd nomination for an episode of ‘Dancing with the Stars’, maintaining his record as…

My RCA TK42 Here is another of the professionally shot portraits of a few of my cameras. This TK42 is forty seven years old and was built in 1967. By my count, there are only about 20 of these that have survived. RCA built the TK42 from 1965 till 1969. Of the 376 made,…

The RCA TK47, Rush And A Beautiful Camera Op! From 1987, here’s the Rush song ‘Time Stands Still’…but that’s the only thing still here. This opens in a television studio with every man’s blond fantasy behind the RCA TK47. You’ll see a lot of old video tricks in this, but they were new then…

‘I Love Lucy’…Warming Up The Audience Here is a new shot of Desi doing the audience warm up for the show. Part of his routine was to tell the audience not to worry about having their view blocked by the cameras, because “they would never be in the way”. At that point, all three…

Desilu…In The Beginning There Was 6633 Romaine Street During the first few years of ‘I Love Lucy’, Desilu Productions rented space at General Service Studios, which is now the Hollywood Center Studios, on Santa Monica Boulevard and North Las Palmas Avenue. Desilu used Stage Two which was named Desilu Playhouse and a special entrance…

The World’s First And Only Camera Limousine I think this Cadillac limousine was first used on President Eisenhower’s inauguration on January 30, 1953. It was NBC’s mobile unit purchased to use in the parade, just ahead of the President’s car. I think the microwave signal from the car was shot to an NBC truck…

The ODD History Of The TWO El Capitan Theaters in Hollywood…. The El Capitan Theater…a very familiar name to movie and TV fans, but did you know there were two El Capitan Theaters in Los Angeles? There were, and the only thing they had in common was their famous name. In this photo, you…

The 14 City NBC Television Network…1949 From the ‘Howdy Doody Show’, we get some interesting information on the status of NBC’s coverage of the country via the AT&T links for live television.  This show was kinescoped and mailed to most of the other major metro areas not covered by the growing network. My home…