October 13, 1957…A Red Letter Day For Videotape & TV History

In 1975 there was a TV special with Charles Kuralt “When TV Was Young” which he introduced from the film archive and VT room. The kine shown of the Edsel Show had no audio and he made note of that. That was of interest to me since I had the audio of the program on a tape a friend had made in Birmingham, Ala.

From the stanpoint of someone who may have watched this show in 1957, let me say, nothing looks familiar. I was a sophomore in high school and 15 years old. I had no interest in Crosby or Sinatra and my friends and I all were of the same opinion that the Edsel looked like a Buick sucking a lemon. We were car fanatics and rode our bikes to all the car dealer lots to see if we could spot the new cars in there storage area. Anyway, I caught pneumonia around this time and probably was sick in bed when this show aired. A few years later, when we started driving, a friend in the crowd got a bit too drunk at Jones Beach and crashed his Edsel into the toll booths on the Southern State Pkwy! No one wanted to ride with him so one guy volunteered to keep an eye on him. Before the State Police showed up he yanked the driver over to his passenger seat and then told the cops he had been driving and fell asleep. That’s the kind of friends I still have. That’s my Edsel story and I’m sticking to it!

Fascinating and historic. Thanks, Bobby!

A 20 second countdown. It took a while to get a VR-1000 up to speed and stable.

Kinescopes often are pooh-poohed as “inferior quality,” which is not universally true. Especially on something that was well done at the network level.

I say that having seen a 1964 Danny Kaye Show that was recorded at CBS Television City and later transferred by CBS to a 16mm kinescope.

When I saw it on UCLA Film and Television Archive’s MWA Vario scanner at 2336 x 1752 resolution, it looked live!

Unless you saw tiny specks of dirt occasionally, or an occasional videotape drop out, you would think it was live!

There was no moire, an interference pattern that happens when one tries to transfer a 525 line film image using a 525 line video system.

My point is that when kinescopes were properly made on good equipment, that was properly maintained, on film that was properly processed, you did obtain good results.

Keep in mind that kinescopes were use not just for time zone delay on the West Coast, but we’re also used to extend network coverage where no electronic means existed.

In the early days that included a good portion of the United States.

Network affiliates got their shows as film copies maybe a week after they were originally broadcast to the East Coast.

And even into the 1970s, kinescopes were being used to record US networks at a San Francisco film lab for processing and shipment to Australia.

Before home video recorders became ubiquitous, kinescopes were also how networks provided copies of appearances to folks who were guests on programs.

One of the problems we see with kinescopes that are used in the infomercials selling music collections is that the kinescopes have not been well handled as they were copied from the film to film or film to videotape.

And those copies may be the only surviving moving images of that particular event. But there are certainly examples of well done Kinescopes that have yet to see the light of day.

There are two videotapes of the Edsel show, according to a CBS Television City Hollywood engineer that I spoke with in July 2006.

He created a 1 inch type C master in 1981 using the best sections of both tapes.

In July, 2006 a small group of members of the Telecine Internet Group — The TIG— had been invited to visit what was then known as “Jurassic Park” in the lower level of CBS Television City. This is now called the “media exchange” room where a variety of video tape recorders ranging from Ampex AVR-1 and 2 quad recorders, One inch type C, and a variety of video cassette formats are located. It enables Television City to transfer pretty much any kind of broadcast video tape to any other format and transmit to the world via satellite or fiber… Or tape!

John Ramstead transfered the Edsel Show to Type C using the two tapes of the program… the one that that’s (now) in the TVC archive, and what he said was one from the CBS NY archive.

At the time—summer of 2006—he said he’d done the transfer 25 years prior… which would make it 1981.

John was telling me about what he did during the process… not much to the video except adjust levels before hand, and then working on the audio to improve what he said was “thin” sounding audio.

IIRC, he said there was one splice in the TVC tape.

John played the 1 inch tape for us, and I can tell you that the sound and picture were remarkable.

Our host at TVC had arranged for the TVC Edsel show video tape and the Quad head that accompanied it to pulled from the TVC archive and shown to us.

I wanted to talk with John more and clarify some things, get accurate notes or comments on camera or tape… and regret that I didn’t do so before he passed away.

I’m glad Kris Trexler was also able to make a copy of the original tape, and share it with us.

It really shows the quality that originated from network studios, And the lasting entertainment that performers from that era today.

Would this also qualify as the first videotaped infomercial? Great show, thanks.