TV History

The Start Of Something BIG! Instant Replay… In 1960, CBS paid $50,000 for the rights to cover the Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, but paid $550,000 for the Summer Olympics rights that year which came, via couriered video tape, from Rome. Winter Olympic rights would never again be such a bargain, and sports nor…

Exclusive Photos From NBC Studio 8H: Apollo 8 News Headquarters The First Moon Mission: Part 4 Tomorrow, we’ll see the last three photos from this set, but today we’ll start in the 8H control room on the left. This Polaroid was taken a few days after the mission ended. The control room was on…

Exclusive Photos From NBC Studio 8H: Apollo 8 News Headquarters The First Moon Mission: Part 3 On the left is NBC reporter Peter Hackes in front of the Apollo 8 capsule mock up, which is incredibly detailed inside and we’ll see that tomorrow. In the center photo, the man at the podium is stage…

Interesting PCP 70 Docking Platform On the left, from Bob Batsche’s Apollo 8 photos is Don Mulvaney with the Norelco PCP 70 portable camera. On the right, from Tom McKeever’s Apollo 9 pix is NBC engineering’s ingenious, “homemade” docking platform for the PCP 70 mounted on a pedestal. I don’t think the dock was…

Apollo 8 Pool Coverage If you studied yesterday’s NBC operations coordination plan from Gemini 5, you saw the back bone of a structure that had been in use from the Mercury days on, and would be used through the Apollo missions. There would be changes and different assignments occasionally, but a routine familiar to…

YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS, But It’s TRUE! Amazingly, I have just received an entirely new set of 30 photos from the NBC 8H Apollo 8 set, TAKEN AT THE SAME TIME as Bob Batsche was taking his! Tom McKeever’s photo of the elapsed time clock is on the bottom…Bob Batsche’s photo is on…

Exclusive Photos From NBC Studio 8H: Apollo 8 News Headquarters The First Moon Mission: Part 2 As mentioned in the post just before this, the TK41 solo photo post, there was another anchor position which can be seen in the photo on the left. The darker space is a “green room” for guests, and…

Gemini 5, NBC Operations Coordination Plan: August 1965 This is a fascinating look at what it took to make it all happen. At NBC, 8H was ground zero and all of the NASA and pool feeds came in here via AT&T. Take a look at all of the locations ABC and CBS are pooling…

Flying Solo…NBC 8H Coverage Of Apollo 8 This shot was so cool, I just had to post it separately! This beautiful picture of an RCA TK41B shows cameraman Bill Goetz on the Chapman Electra crane in late December of 1968 in 8H. Behind the camera, you can see glassed in rooms. We’ll see these…

That’s One Small Step For Man… Leading up to the July 16, 1969 launch of Apollo 11, and continuing through their July 24th return, the eyes of the entire world were fixed on the three men seen here in a live interview with an unknown network. From left to right is Buzz Aldrin, Neil…

NBC Studio 6E, The “News Nooks” & Weekend Nightly News Studio On the left is the entrance to NBC Studio 6E which has 4 small studios and control rooms. Others 6E studio photos will follow, but today we are looking at Media Room 1, which is where Lester Holt does the ‘NBC Nightly News,…

Conan & Jimmy Parsons Take A Trip To The ‘Big Bang’ Set Somewhat like yesterdays Letterman video that gave us a good look at 6A, here’s a fun and interesting look at Conan O’Brien’s Warner studio, just a couple of doors up from ‘Big Bang’, which we’ll also see. Here’s the golf cart trip…

Exclusive Photos From NBC Studio 8H: Apollo 8 News Headquarters The First Moon Mission: Part 1 Apollo 8, the second manned mission in the Apollo space program, was the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Moon and orbit it. This mission gave us the instantly famous “earth rise” photo. The three…

It’s Howdy Doody Time…And Places When the show started in 1947, it originated from NBC’s first TV studio 3H. Up top is our old friend Frank Merklein with his trusty TK10 on the Doody set in 3H. Posing with Frank as the dolly man is the show’s director Sandy Howard. 8G came on line…

It’s Howdy Doody Time??? The X Rated, Ultimate Inside Story! This is the only place you will ever read about of some of the backstage shenanigans on the world’s most famous kids show. Let me start by saying that these things only happened in rehearsals. When children were on the set, everything was squeaky…

February 15, 1982, WE Were David Letterman…Sort Of… Beautifully shot from David’s point-of-view, this opening segment starts in this dressing room and gives us a great look at NBC Studio 6A. I posted this a couple of years ago, but thanks to Andy Rose, here it is again with some names to the faces…

The History Of Live Pool Splashdown Coverage…Part 3 Our friend Jodie Peeler has written a great three part story on this subject with lots of detail, linked video and photos that I am proud to present here. Unlike today, bringing live television pictures from a ship at sea was a whole new ballgame and…

Walter Cronkite’s First Night As CBS News Anchorman It was 6:45, Monday April 16, 1962 when Walter Cronkite delivered his first news cast as the new anchor of ‘The Evening Edition Of CBS News’. His new set was in Studio 41 at Grand Central which had also been where Douglas Edwards had delivered the…

The Nearly Lost Art Of Live Crane Work… I can’t write this without thinking of our friend John Pinto and his talented crew on the Chapman Electra at ‘Saturday Night Live’. In the US, that is the only show left that uses a stage crane. The BBC’s equivalent to John and his predecessor, the…