September 17, 1955…First College Football Colorcast
The first NBC color coverage of a college football game was in Atlanta when Georgia Tech Yellowjackets played the Miami Hurricanes, September 17, 1955 at Grant Field. Not long after that, NBC went to Ann Arbor’s “Big House” for a Wolverine game. In the great video below showcasing RCA color and the first commercially available color camera, the RCA TK41, there is about 30 seconds of the Michigan game at the end of the clip.
In that there weren’t many color sets till the mid 60s, why did they do all this color production? For two reasons…first, every color event taught both RCA and NBC how to do better color work and constant upgrading and modifications were being made to enhance the image on black and white sets. Second, the more color shows offered, the better chance to interest customers in a new RCA color set.
Below is a 4 minute clip showing the great RCA TK41s in service, including the football remote.
Some company was actually selling plastic sheets door to door that were touted to convert your BW set to color by simply sticking it on the front of the “picture tube”. My grandmother fell for it. This holographic filter would make the image look rainbowish. People would buy them having never seen color tv in person.
NBC Color was self-serving for parent RCA since they could sell more color TV sets. My parents first color TV was a RCA. They told it was a piece of junk. They later bought a Sylvania and it lasted 18 years.