TV History

Ever See One Of These In Person? This is the RCA TK44 prototype camera in action at the 1967 NAB. It used an Isocon tube in the luminescence channel and three lead oxide tubes in the chrominance channels. The TK44A dropped the luminescence channel and replaced the lead oxide tubes with Plumbicons and new…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…8 Days On February 9, 1964, The Beatles were not the only British singing stars to make their American television debut. As you’ll see in the screen shot from the same night, Davie Jones was there too, but not as The Monkey’s lead singer. He was playing the roll…

Zoomar And The Right Wing Conspiracy As mentioned in the post below, Zoomar lenses were in use at CBS Studio 50 in the 1950s and here is an RCA TK11 fitted with one. As for the “right wing conspiracy”, well…take a look behind Ed. In essence, there was no right wing to this stage…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…10 Days Up close and personal! Looking at how close the crane is in these shots is an interesting reminder that the Studio 50 stage is only 29 feet deep and 37 feet across with a very shallow stage right. There was a 10 foot crane ramp, but without…

Delco Parts Commercial Form NBC’s ‘Wide, Wide World’ Here’s a nice look at an RCA TK30 on a crane as this announcer uses it as a prop in this live spot for Delco. At the start of this clip is the host of the show, Dave Garroway. ‘Wide, Wide World’ began in June of…

In The Beginning…ESPN On the right is ESPN’s first remote truck, pictured here at Compact Video in Burbank around 1979. The unit was called “140” and looks to be equipped with either Hitachi or Thomson cameras. The photo on the left is also from the early days and the camera on the pickup is…

CBS Studios 53 to 56…Liederkrantz Hall, 111 East 58th St This facility was an old German social club building that CBS leased around 1950 for conversion to a production center. It’s four studios were moderate in size but were adequate for the many soap operas that came from this site, including some of the…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…12 Days Here’s the HUGE SURPRISE I promised yesterday! Who knew that CBS had sent one of their early hand held video cameras to Miami to get shots for the February 16, 1964 ‘Ed Sullivan Show’? I just found this awesome photo a few days ago and it is…

Jerry Lewis, Creator Of Motion Picture Video Assist Although we have been here before, this is a new photo that shows and RCA Vidicon camera mounted just above the optical viewfinder on this Mitchell 35 BNC camera. Lewis started using this process in 1960 while shooting ‘The Bellboy’, but I think this photo is…

The Baughman Pedestal This is my favorite light weight camera support…The Baughman Portable Pedestal made by the E J Baughman Company in El Monte CA. This is the earliest version that had a smaller central column that was only adjustable with a wrench and debuted around 1955. Soon after, the center column became a…

Television In Simpler Times… Covering the Inglewood Christmas parade November 23, 1962, here’s a KTTV RCA TK30 equipped with a Taylor Hobson Varotal Field Lens. Having been the Los Angeles Dodgers station since their move there in 1958, the station had a lot of remote equipment and a staff experienced in putting cameras together…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…13 Days Welcome to Miami Beach! The Beatles second live Sullivan show came from The Deauville Hotel on February 16, 1964. Having arrived a few days early, the band, among other things paid a visit to Cassius Clay, took a few dips in the ocean, and on Saturday had…

In Preparation For A HUGE Surprise! Tomorrow, I will be posting a hugely surprising photo…one that I am sure you have never seen. To prepare you, this post is about the CBS/Ikegami partnership on the development of an ENG camera that began around 1961. A year or so back, Dr. Joe Flaherty, who is…

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…15 Days Today, A Primer In: How to tell which performance is which. With the anniversary approaching, you’ll see a lot of photos and clips and with this guide, you can tell which performance is which. The Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan these three consecutive Sunday nights…February 9,…

The First Home Of CBS…485 Madison Avenue, At 52nd Street This photo shows the building still under construction in April 1927. CBS Radio Network went on the air September 18 of that year with 18 stations and operated out of the office for the New York station at Steinway Hall on West 57th Street…

Earliest Use And Photo Of The RCA TK40 & HF Cradle Head In early August of 1953, RCA shipped the first four production models of the TK40 to the Colonial Theater in New York for field testing. They also sent the first and only engineering model of the Houston Fearless cradle head which you…

60 Years Ago, Houston Fearless Introduced The Cradle Head In March of 1954, this ad appeared in all the trade magazines to announce the arrival of this new pan head. The MCH 1 was for monochrome cameras and the CH 1 was for the RCA TK41. Aside from a few of the first TK40s…