Just In From Associated Press…A Story About Yours Truly!<\/p>\n
By Frazier Moore<\/span><\/p>\n WINDER, Ga. \u2014 What does Bobby Ellerbee see when he looks at his antique TV cameras? He sees a bit of what they\u2019ve seen since the birth of television.<\/p>\n His cameras are now dormant, decommissioned from performing any on-air service. But those 15 cameras arranged in, fittingly, his family room in Winder, Georgia., have been cosmetically restored to mint condition and they teem with history.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s his RCA model TK-10, his oldest, which hails from 1946. It is trimmed with a jaunty red stripe and name plates designating its long-ago owner: Chicago station WGN-TV.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s one of the original eight cameras they bought when they put the station on the air,\u201d Ellerbee says.<\/p>\n Nearby is his Mark VII, a color camera built by the Marconi company whose no-nonsense design belies its fanciful role in the early 1970s: It is one of six then owned by New York\u2019s Tele-Tape Productions, where \u201cSesame Street\u201d first came to life.<\/p>\n Ellerbee\u2019s pride-and-joy is his half-century-old RCA TK-41C, a slightly modified version of the industry\u2019s first widely used (and, for some years, only) color camera, which was introduced in 1953. It\u2019s a silver beast, weighing in at more than 300 pounds but with a swept-back, streamlined profile.<\/p>\n \u201cNo other camera looks like that,\u201d says Ellerbee.<\/p>\n One of only a couple hundred ever built, this behemoth saw duty at NBC\u2019s Burbank, California, studios, home to \u201cThe Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,\u201d \u201cLaugh-In\u201d and dozens of other shows aired, per the network\u2019s famous peacock, \u201cin living color.\u201d<\/p>\n In the current era of pocket-sized minicams available to anyone, this camera, which new cost more than $400,000 in today\u2019s money, stands as a monument to TV\u2019s early challenges and promise.<\/p>\n That promise enthralled Ellerbee, now 66 (and a distant cousin of TV journalist Linda Ellerbee), from a tender age.<\/p>\n As a child in the studio audience of \u201cThe Popeye Club,\u201d a wildly popular 1950s kids\u2019 show hosted by \u201cOfficer Don\u201d Kennedy on Atlanta\u2019s WSB-TV, young Bobby was as much captivated by the cameras (RCA black-and-white TK-30s, a model he owns one of today) as by encountering Officer Don in the flesh.<\/p>\n In high school he took a detour \u2014 radio announcing \u2014 from his planned path of becoming a TV director.<\/p>\n \u201cI had to train myself,\u201d he recalls in his seasoned baritone. \u201cAt first, I sounded pretty much like, \u2018Hiiii, how y\u2019allll?\u2019 and I had a high voice. But I got it down. Smoking cigarettes and drinking liquor helped a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n When he entered the University of Georgia, his career as a deejay was flowering on local Athens radio, and after college he landed jobs in Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco and Miami, among other major markets, before forging a lucrative career as a commercial announcer.<\/p>\n More recently, he landed a dream gig voicing the Sheriff on the Adult Swim cartoon show \u201cSquidbillies,\u201d now in its 10th season.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I always had a thing about TV cameras,\u201d he says, and from childhood he made it his mission to learn all about them, even sending off requests for product manuals from manufacturers like RCA, General Electric and Norelco.<\/p>\n \u201cI always thought to myself, one of these days I\u2019m gonna have a camera of my own,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n That took a while.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing in radio, you have to move every few years and you can\u2019t drag along a lot of stuff. But when I left Miami and came back to Georgia a dozen years ago, I thought, \u2018It\u2019s time to get a bigger place and get one television camera \u2014 at least.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Getting started was easier than he expected. He called an Atlanta TV station, asked for the chief engineer and left a message: \u201cI\u2019m looking for TV cameras. If you got any, call me.\u201d<\/p>\n In a flash he was the owner of nine scrapped TK-44s and 45s (RCA color cameras from the late 1960s) that once were based at NBC Burbank before landing in a Peachtree Street junk bin.<\/p>\n His collection now totals more than two dozen, each a glorious totem of TV\u2019s past.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a past Ellerbee has curated with stories, photo archives and technical lore for his website, whose name \u2014 eyesofageneration.com \u2014 seems to him a no-brainer: \u201cWhat\u2019s another name for television cameras, in the broader sense? They were the eyes of a generation \u2014 us baby boomers, the first generation to grow up with TV.\u201d<\/p>\n Though, strictly speaking, his cameras don\u2019t work, they operate for Ellerbee exactly as he wants them to. They evoke warm memories of past eras they served and programs they beheld. His burly TK-41 speaks of countless nights when Johnny Carson laughed it up with Ed and Doc. His slick Norelco PC-60, emblazoned with \u201cCBS COLOR,\u201d sparks recollections of CBS\u2019 variety shows of the 1960s and \u201970s like those of Carol Burnett and the Smothers Brothers.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cameras are where it all starts,\u201d says Ellerbee. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of like a vortex, because they bring that whole outside world\u201d \u2014 he makes a broad, gathering sweep with his arms \u2014 \u201cto MY house.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have seen a lot of people up close and personal that I watched on TV,\u201d he observes.<\/p>\n That, finally, is what his cameras mean to him.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re like old friends, in a way,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have something in common.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n