TV History

2 Birds, 1 Stone…The EMI 2000 & Behind The Scenes First, I have been asked several times recently just what cameras are we seeing in the movie ‘Network’. They are the EMI 2000 plumbicon cameras.The BBC bought them in mass starting around 1968 or ’69. The clip below is from around 1977 and shows…

3000 West Alameda Avenue…NBC Burbank, 1958 This is a classic! Shot on 2″ video tape, here is a drive by of NBC Burbank. Thanks to Gay Lanvill for sharing this with us. I had Gay in mind earlier this morning when I posted the video from ‘Big Bang’, on which she is an AD.…

Classic! ‘The Price Is RIght’…1982 Behind The Scenes! This must have been done just before the Hitachi days at Television City because there are Norelco PC 70s on the set! This is a very good clip and takes us all over Studio 33 and into the control room too. We’ll even see part of…

‘Big Bang Theroy’…Behind The Scenes This is quite an interesting look at how the show is done, and although it’s shot with digital film cameras, it comes together very much like a live camera show. This has eerily familiar quality and I could not help but think of how ‘I Love Lucy’ was shot…

You Didn’t Think I Would Come Home Without These Did You? Since my first glimpse of an RCA TK44 mounted on the Chapman Electra crane on SNL back in 1975, I have wanted to sit in “the bucket”. I finally have and I’m a happy man! For the full story on the Electra and…

‘Saturday Night Live’…April 5, 2014 Time Lapse Video This was a great show…the one where Pharrell Williams did “Happy” and Anna Kendrick was guest host, just 4 weeks before my visit. This starts with the audience load in and zooms through 90 minutes in just 2 minutes. As good as this is, this static…

‘Saturday Night Live’…2009 Time Lapse Video This is the first SNL time lapse clip and was done in NBC’s Studio 8H five years ago, but the crane crew is still the same. On the boom arm is Louis Delli Paoli and Robert Mancari (cap), and Phil Pernice is driving. John Pinto is “in the…

ABC, CBS, NBC…Tuesday Night Lineup, 1960 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAgrP18c2D8 What you would’ve watched on a typical Tuesday night in the fall of 1960: Bugs Bunny, Rifleman, Wyatt Earp, Stagecoach West, Alcoa Premiere (One Step Beyond)… Source

You Bet Your Ass There Is A Connection To ‘I Dream Of Jeannie’! This photo is from the 1964 movie ‘The Brass Bottle’. It starred Tony Randall and Barbara Eden…but not a a genie! Eden played Randall’s wife…Burl Ives played the genie that caused more problems than he solved. ‘I Dream Of Jeannie’ was…

WBKB, Chicago Camera Mystery #2…Anyone Have A Clue? UPDATED 2021: At this Patent link we get our answer and see the inventor is Bill Eddy, WBKB chief engineer. https://patents.google.com/patent/US2315406 While we’re at WBKB in the ’40s, I thought we would try and identify these unique cameras. I had seen these photos a few years…

WBKB, Chicago Camera Mystery #1 The photo on the left was sent by Gary Walters who wanted to know what kind of camera this is. The picture (and the others) are from Chicago’s WBKB around 1943. My first thought was…this is a very early Dumont mounted on a barber chair base. The more I…

AMEN, Dan Rather! AMEN! The Sad State Of News & Media I’ve been wanting to talk about how media deregulation that started under President Reagan has hurt us as a country, and with the recent comments from Dan Rather on the subject, now seems to be the appropriate time. Below are a few quotes…

‘Saturday Night Live’…Me Behind The Guest Host Entrance Door In the photo, and in one of the video clips, you see the other side of the door that SNL guest hosts use to enter the stage. Yes, that’s me and I’ll tell you more about what’s there, but first here’s a clip of Ashton…

Movie History Comes To Television…’I’ve Got A Secret’ 1958 Every once in a while, this great game show would take off on a completely different track and this is one of those shows. There are two guests with very interesting secrets, which I won’t spoil, and a surprise guest at the end who happens…

‘Sunset Boulevard’…Behind The Scenes Now this is funny. According to her daughter, Gloria Swanson stayed in character for the entire duration of the film…except for one hilarious break. On the day she filmed the Charlie Chaplin imitation scene, Swanson arrived on the set to find everyone there wearing a Chaplin bowler hat, and was…

June 2, 1953…Elizabeth Crowned: NBC, CBS Race Footage To US It was 61 years ago today: the race between CBS and NBC to be the first with their own films of Elizabeth II’s coronation. The films were to be ferried by Canberra jet bomber to Goose Bay, and from there the networks would ferry…

Short But Sweet…RCA TK41 & Norelco PC 70 In New York Given that NBC bought 35 Norelcos of their mobile units in 1967, I suspect this is about ’68 or ’69. This 20 second clip seems to be on the steps of a church at a press event in NYC…possibly a wedding, a draft…

Speaking Of Tex Avery…A Special Find This starts at the segment that I remember laughing at as a five year old boy in 1955 at a movie theater. The “naked” turkey had me in stitches. Anyone else remember this? If found this wile doing some research on Tex Avery. This is a great MGM…

The BEST EVER Story Of Disney! My most favorite voice belongs to the great Mason Adams and his narration sets the perfect tone for this magnificent presentation. This Disney Channel special covers everything from the history to the how in exceptional detail with ultra rare footage at every turn. From Steamboat Willie to Epcot…this…

Disneyland Opening Day, As Seen Live On ABC…July 18, 1955 In today’s first post, we saw the preparation for this event and this video starts where that one ended…with Art Linkletter’s welcome. At the 2:00 mark, Art describes the previous day’s rehearsal as something like “trying to cover three erupting volcanos without expecting any…