An Inside Look At The Final CBS Color Test…October 20, 1951
On September 6, 2016
- TV History
An Inside Look At The Final CBS Color Test…October 20, 1951
Thanks to Tom Buckley for this wonderful IBEW Newsletter article from January of ’52, that gives us intimate details of that last test broadcast of the CBS Field Sequential Color System.
The article not only names everybody on the 12 man crew, but in just three pages, gives us a great overview of the system’s history, and the details of how CBS came to fold the tent on this work. A “must read” for anyone interested in television’s color wars. Enjoy and Share! -Bobby Ellerbee
CBS’ excuse sounds phoney baloney. I don’t think I’ve heard of the Korean War having that much effect on the homefront. I’ve never heard of any rationing during that conflict, and I certainly don’t remember Vietnam effecting anything here. It would certainly be fun to see a standing side by side comparison of the CBS color system and the RCA system.
Fascinating! First time I heard of the CBS system being scuttled because of “material shortages”. You have to wonder what these materials so vital to national defense could have been (and how instrumental RCA was in having them declared such). By the late 1960s, CBS programming was still mostly B&W.
Excellent find!
One of the times when the federal government made the right decision (along with the Interstate Highway system).
Or this on page 7 — I see Rick spotted it, too.
There’s also a short blurb in that newsletter about research by Bing Crosby Enterprises on what would become videotape 4 years later.