This show was network television’s first rehearsed, non-reality program. It was a one hour variety/sketch comedy show hosted by Helen Parrish. Parrish had been a child film star and she became the first popular TV star. With the lessons learned and a new host and sponsor, NBC would bring this show back in 1948 in a tighter and more structured form as, ‘The Texaco Star Theater’ with Milton Berle. ‘Hour Glass’ debuted on NBC in television’s first ever “fall season” and ran from 8 till 9 PM on Thursday nights from May 8, 1946 till March 6, 1947. In 1946, NBC only had 10 shows on the network which covered NYC, Schenectady and Philadelphia but that was twice as many as the only other network offering television and that was Dumont. On Thursday nights, ‘Hour Glass’ was preceded on the network by the 10 minute ‘Esso News Reel’ at 7:50 and followed by local programs. ‘Hour Glass’ pioneered sketch/variety TV, and was the most ambitious and expensive production yet with big production numbers, chorus girls, a band, famous guest stars, and more with the show’s sponsor pouring in over $200,000 for the show’s nine month run.
The program was produced by the J. Walter Thompson agency on behalf of Standard Brands for their Chase and Sanborn and Tenderleaf Tea lines. ‘Hour Glass’ featured different performers every week, including Peggy Lee and, in one of the first examples of a top radio star appearing on network television…Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy in November 1946. The show also showcased filmed segments produced by Thompson’s Motion Picture Department; these ranged from short travelogues to advertisements. Every episode also included a ten minute drama, which proved one of the more popular portions of the show.
“Although Thompson and Standard Brands representatives occasionally disagreed over the quality of individual episodes, their association was placid compared to the constant sniping that was the hallmark of the agency’s relationship with NBC. It started with unhappiness over studio space, which Thompson regarded as woefully inadequate”*!
The tension escalated when the network insisted that an NBC director manage the show from live rehearsals through actual broadcast. The network was similarly displeased that Thompson refused to clear their commercials with NBC before air time. Parrish left the show in November to return to Hollywood and was succeeded by a much less popular host, Eddie Mayehoff. In February 1947 Standard Brands canceled ‘Hour Glass’. They were pleased with the show’s performance in terms of beverage sales and its overall quality, yet were leery about continuing to pour money into a program that did not reach a large number of households. The strain between NBC and Thompson played a role as well. Still, Hour Glass did provide Thompson with a valuable blueprint for the agency’s celebrated and long-running production, Kraft Television Theater.
* quoted from The Museum Of Broadcast Communications, “Encyclopedia of Television”.
Dr. Joe Flaherty was the Senior Vice President of Technology at CBS and at the bottom of my story is an article with industry colleagues sharing their memories of the icon of television innovation.
There are few that have seen more television history than Joe Flaherty. There are fewer still that have made as much television history! I will not try and cover all that here, but will instead bring to light some interesting background surrounding several major events in CBS and broadcast history. As I try and boil down over an hour of conversation, I may do some skipping around from topic to topic, and our fist topic is the backstory on Norelco.
According to Joe, “If CBS is the Tiffany network, the BBC is the Gold network”. Although CBS had a couple of hundred engineers in research and development, the BBC had three times that many. In the early 60s, Dr. Flaherty, with a degree in physics was already moving up the ladder and was sent to England to see what he could learn form the BBC about some new black and white cameras they were using.
They were Phillips cameras and had this new Plumbicon tube in them that made great pictures. While there, he called Phillips and they sent a plane for him. He went to the plant in Holland and while there, asked if the Plumbicon would work for color. They had not given it much thought, but after that visit, they did. The result was the PC 60. In early 1964, Joe went back to Holland to take a look. There were problems with the red channel registration on those early PC 60s, but Joe was impressed and bought all 25 of them. Unfortunately, the plant in Eindhoven could only make 25 a year, so he bought a years worth of production. Soon after, Phillips set up shop in New York and began making the PC 70 there and at a much faster clip. CBS had ordered the first 75 and delivery began in 1965.
This was a busy period for Joe and CBS. In 1952, CBS bought a dairy depot from Sheffield Farms and had used it mostly for scenery storage, but with the studios at Grand Central Terminal getting cramped, and wanting to consolidated some of the many broadcast theaters throughout Manhattan, a change was needed. William Paley put Joe in charge of converting the building to the CBS Broadcast Center. By 63, some of the TV studios were up and running and master control moved from Grand Central in late 64 completing the move. With his intimate understanding of the Norelco color regime which was to come, he was the perfect man for the job.
Although the RCA TK10s and TK30 came long before Joe got to CBS in 1956, I did ask him about the unique striped band around the top of most of the cameras. For a long time, no one knew or could say why they were there. A few years back, Pete Fasciano, who developed the Avid editing system, was helping me with the art work for my TK11, which I dressed as a CBS network camera. When laying our the black horizontal stripes at the top and bottom and the alternating grey and white vertical bars, Pete realized this was actually a grey scale test pattern. I told Joe the story, he laughed and confirmed our theory. The amplitude was adjusted using the black and white bars and the frequency adjusted using the grey bars.
Speaking of grey…now we know why all the CBS equipment was painted ‘navy grey’. Joe could not remember the name, but one of the early chief engineers for the television network was an former admiral in the Navy. You can see where this is headed can’t you? Yes, it was his idea to paint all the equipment ‘navy grey’ so it would all match. This started in the mid 50s. Many theories have abounded, like ‘eye acuity’ and more, but…
By the way, one of the financial considerations involved in management signing off on the 100 camera Norelco purchase involved man power. For many years, CBS upper management referred to the RCA color systems as ‘NSCT’ systems, which stood for ‘Never The Same Color Twice’. For network quality, the RCA TK41s and color telecine chains needed one video man to shade each camera and chain. It was thought that with the Norelco cameras, one man could shade 6 cameras at a time. I’m not sure how that worked out.
William Paley would ask Joe to lunch about 4 or 5 times a year. Each meeting, Paley would ask “What are we not doing that we should be doing?” That’s a great question for a CEO to ask and Joe always had to do his homework before each meeting. One of those big ideas was digital and HDTV, which we’ll get to soon, but first, let’s go back to the early 60s and another of Joe’s big ideas…ENG cameras.
Joe said one of the great things about CBS news was, “They were always willing to try something that almost worked.” This is where the ENG cameras come in. Even before CBS became involved with Ikegami in 1962, they had built a couple of ENG cameras in house. Last month, we had trouble identifying a CBS ENG camera at a Gemini space launch…I’m betting that was one of the CBS/Ikegami custom built cameras.
CBS News wanted to go with ENG cameras but there were still a lot of kinks to be worked out with the cameras and with a mobile video tape recorder. In the early 60s, Joe began spending time in Japan where CBS had an engineering office. He worked with Ikegami on the cameras, and soon after with Sony on the VTR. To test this all out, the CBS owned station in St. Louis, KMOX became ground zero for ENG production. The confidential agreements between CBS and Ikegami and Sony paid off and long before the RCA TK76 came out in 1976, CBS was using custom made, Ikegami ENG cameras. As is noted in his bios, Joe was the real pioneering power in the field of ENG.
He is also called ‘The Father of HDTV’ and it’s true. NHK in Japan had come up with the idea and Joe was there collaborating with them in 1971. There are many online articles about his many contributions and I’ll let you Google those, but here is an interesting backstory of one of the fist demonstrations.
Francis Ford Coppola was there and told Joe that, in his opinion, HDTV was better than 35mm film prints. The 35mm negatives were better than early HD, but when prints are made for distribution, the resolution and colors break down. Among the early problems was the difficulty in seeing the HD broadcast signal as the early HD receivers were not up to par yet. This is reminds me of the problems at RCA in the early days of color. They had to build a monitor as good as the camera to see what they had.
Jumping to one more quick item, I had long wondered which CBS studio had the Dumont cameras. As it turns out, 4 studios had them…Studios 53, 54, 55 and 56 at Liederkrantz Hall were all Dumont equipped. Oh yes, and Joe is the only man to have ever redone The Ed Sullivan Theater twice! Once in 1965 for color, and once again when David Letterman came to CBS.
TV Technology, a TWICE sister publication, reached out to some of his industry colleagues for their remembrances of Joe.
Peter Fannon was president of the Advanced Television Test Center and recently retired after a long career with Panasonic.
“It is very hard to imagine a television world without Joe Flaherty. He was—over six decades—a persistent force for global technological progress and industry advancement. Whether responsible for conceiving, building, or integrating new technologies and systems, Joe was a master at inspiring—and yes, sometimes terrifying—others in order to accomplish with him the progressive changes he could foresee would improve television for both content creator and broadcast company, for both TV viewer and online consumer alike.
His personal drive was, to be sure, formidable. He was relentless in pursuit of the new and better, the smarter and more efficient ways in broadcast and satellite spectrum use, studio and newsgathering design, camera and recording technologies, computer-generated imaging, facilities and network interconnection, and display technologies of all sorts. Throughout his career he supported or led research and development in-house, and he worked tirelessly with manufacturers around the world to bring to life new concepts in all of these arenas. He spent uncountable time traveling and working with broadcasters in all parts of the globe, and in international standards bodies, seeking to align ever-improving television technologies in order to effect easy global program exchange, and to spur competition for the best solutions whatever the issue.
Most famously, it was Joe Flaherty who first propelled the notion of high-definition TV in the United States, calling up all his persuasiveness to rally engineering, business and then political forces to bring “advanced television” to American broadcasting. Under the aegis of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service (ACATS)—which he had lobbied to have created—he chaired the all-important Planning Committee, which set out the technical and operational criteria for what became, barely a decade later, the world’s first all-digital HDTV terrestrial broadcast system.
And during that time he gave time and attention to every advanced TV system proponent in order to solicit the best ideas; participated in every Advisory Committee meeting and activity; served on the Board and technical committee of the Advanced Television Test Center; spoke frequently to domestic and international gatherings about the television of the future; and lobbied Members of Congress, Commissioners of the FCC, and both White House and Federal agencies’ leaders on the need and means for a smooth, nationwide transition to the new system.
It will be impossible indeed to see and enjoy television at all without thinking often of the passion, commitment and contributions of Joe Flaherty to making it all happen.”
Richard Wiley is former chairman of the FCC, chairman of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Television and is partner at Washington, D.C., law firm Wiley Rein.
“I worked closely with Joe during the eight-plus years of ACATS (FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Service). He always kept his eye on the end game—high definition television. We had people suggesting systems that were lesser than HDTV but that was never going to be satisfactory from his standpoint. He helped develop the rapid deployment of HDTV on a worldwide basis and I learned a lot by reading a number of his papers.
He was a true visionary and could find pragmatic solutions to the innumerable technical problems that we confronted during those eight years. For example, when we had to test these different systems, he went to the NAB to lobby for developing the Advanced Television Test Center—he was instrumental in getting it built.
I went with Joe on many international trips and everybody knew him, he was the ambassador for television at large. He was known worldwide and I don’t think anyone else had that status—he was a unique figure. He was soft spoken but determined. He might have ruffled some feathers from time to time but he had a dream. He and Mark Richer were the two engineers I relied on the most because they would always give me the unvarnished truth as they saw it.”
Larry Thorpe is Senior Fellow at Canon U.S.A. and spent more than 20 years at Sony Electronics pioneering the development of HDTV and digital production technologies in the U.S. broadcast and motion picture industries.
“My positive response at an initial meeting with Joseph Flaherty in the mid-1970s was probably the fact that we were both of modest physical stature. But I was soon to learn that his industry stature soared far above my own. Maybe it was my being Irish that formed the early bond between us (he regularly vacationed in Ireland). While that manifested itself largely in cordiality over the next decade whenever we sporadically met, it was to blossom into a working bond in the early eighties when then Dr. Flaherty learned that I was Masahiko Morizono’s point man on driving Sony’s HDTV agenda in the U.S. The very close relationship between those two giants was forged more than a decade earlier when Joe Flaherty’s drive behind electronic newsgathering was flanked by Morizono-san’s drive behind ENG cameras and recorders—first the Umatic and later the Betacam.
At a time when HDTV was looked askance at by most broadcasters, Joe Flaherty had instantly seen the future of video imaging and indeed the future of broadcasting. If he was relentless in his drive on ENG, he was positively titanic in his unwavering leadership on HDTV. His vision of 1080/60.00 as a potential worldwide HDTV production standard never faltered over the next decade and a half. I spent countless hours with Joe at endless formal meetings of the various HDTV standardization groups, the multiple strategy sessions within CBS, and supporting the never-ending demonstrations that he organized at every conceivable venue around the globe. While the latter could at times create tensions between us, Joe would always make things right with a fine-dining lunch or dinner.
Leadership emerges under various guises but Joe Flaherty based his on a sharply focused determination that was at times disguised by his remarkably quiet voice. Entanglements with the separate and competing HDTV agendas of European broadcasters, the computer industry, and Hollywood never daunted Joe. His international diplomacy was unwavering as he sought to persuade all to his mission of a unified HDTV standard. And indeed, Joe could be uncannily persuasive. The emergence of the worldwide 1080-line HDTV standard (albeit at international frame rates) is testament to his persistence.
I was sad to see Joe fade quietly from the world scene over the past decade—but impressed and heartened by the fact that he was in his eighties when he did start to withdraw. Everything he dreamed about over the past 50 years—from ENG to HDTV—are today colossal global realities. Joe Flaherty can surely rest in peace having left a legacy of jobs superbly done. Goodbye, my mentor.”
Mark Richer is president of the Advanced Television Systems Committee.
“Dr. Flaherty’s lifetime commitment to the advancement of television technology was extraordinary. Among his many contributions to the industry was the pivotal role he played in the formation of ATSC in 1982. He served on the ATSC Executive Committee and Board of Directors until 2010 when he was named to the honorary “Member Emeritus.”
Dr. Flaherty’s unwavering commitment to the standardization of HDTV was contagious, motivating the industry to develop the highest quality system possible. He had the vision to understand that the specifications for HDTV should not be limited by the capabilities of the cameras and displays available at the time.
Joe pushed industry groups to establish long term strategies often quoting one his favorite proverbs, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.”
Gary Shapiro is president/CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). The group issued the following statement shortly after Flaherty’s passing.
“Joe Flaherty was a visionary who believed the American HDTV standard should be the highest-possible quality. Throughout his decades as a CBS executive, he advocated for better national and global standards for all broadcasters. Joe often called me and urged me to take a strong position in favor of broadcast quality, and I never failed to heed his advice. Today, people around the world enjoy a richer TV viewing experience than ever, in no small part because of Joe’s focus on excellence. We have lost a true industry legend.”
FIRST EVER VIDEO RECORDING…September 20, 1927? YES!
Until yesterday, I had never heard of this and found it hard to believe, but here is the amazing proof laid out, fittingly…in 3 video reports.
In the 1996 report (top video), a single disc of the John Logie Baird video record or Phonovision had just been discovered. As you’ll see, no one had ever seen it, because even Baird had not created a way to play it back, so another Scotsman had to build a way to see it, which is covered there too.
The images were from 1933 and showed The Paramount Astoria dancing girls, shot with a horizontal 30 scan line mechanical system. In the 1998 story (bottom video), 11 more Baird discs have been found, with the earliest dated September 20, 1927. This report includes bits from those newly discovered discs, and at the end there is interesting archival film of Alexandra Palace being made ready for the tests of the competing Baird mechanical system, and Marconi-EMI’s new electronic system.
FIRST, Don’t miss this! The Television Legends Interview Series taped six half hour segments with Mr. Ripp and the first of the series is linked below.
In the photo above, we see Heino starting his career in Studio 3H behind an RCA A500 Iconoscope camera. Below, he is literally the “right hand man” to another legend, Dwight Hemion (no headset), who is directing ‘The Perry Como Show’ at The Ziegfeld Theater.
Mr. Ripp was born with a mild deformity in the fingers of his left hand which kept him from serving in WWII. This allowed him to keep his new job at NBC, which he began in the early ’40s. All through the war years, he was there…learning and innovating.
Heino moved from the studio to the control room and soon became one of the network’s top technical directors….a role that he would continue in until his last years with NBC, in which he served as the TD on ‘Saturday Night Live’.
You name it, he saw it! When television took off after the war, Ripp was right in the middle of the biggest entertainment and technology explosion ever seen. Every big, live NBC show you can think of, Heino was there for.
If you are lucky, you learn something new every day, and today, we are all lucky! I had no idea that what you are about to read and see here ever happened, but thanks to yesterday’s post on the first mobile units, we have fascinating new images and video to share.
Thanks to David Breneman and James Freeman, we now know that there was indeed a mobile unit in service at the 1936 Berlin Olympics…BUT…not in the classic sense, of being equipped with live electronic video cameras shooting the action.
Instead, the German unit was an “intermediate film” television apparatus, which I had never heard of either.
It works this way…a normal cinema camera, mounted on a transport van, initially records the footage on film, which is sent down the camera’s light tight pedestal into the van. There, the film is immediately developed inside the van and then run through a flying spot scanner camera (so called because it moved a focused beam of light back and forth across the image), and electronically converted from a negative to a positive television image. Scenes from the just developed film could be broadcast with a delay of about a minute.
In this video, you can see the Telefunken cameras and the Berlin van, with an animated diagram of how it works. The photos include a shot of the van, a diagram of the operation, US champion Jessie Owen and a Telefunken Canon camera, and at the end a few seconds of film shot by the van top camera.
John Logie Baird began developing the process in 1932, borrowing the idea of Georg Oskar Schubert from his licensees in Germany, where it was demonstrated by Fernseh AG in 1932 and used for broadcasting in 1934.
The BBC used Baird’s version of the process during the first three months of its then-“high-definition” television service from November 1936 through January 1937, and German television used it during broadcasts of the 1936 Summer Olympics. In both cases, intermediate film cameras alternated with newly introduced direct television cameras.
The intermediate film system, with its expensive film usage and relatively immobile cameras, did have the advantage that it left a filmed record of the program which could be rerun at a different time, with a better image quality than the later kinescope films, which were shot from a video monitor.
Television tubes developed by Farnsworth and Zworykin in the United States, and by EMI in England, with much higher sensitivity to light, made the intermediate film system obsolete by 1937.
I had no idea that motion picture film could be developed that fast, which brings up all kind of questions about NBC’s mad dashes to get kinescope film turned around for rebroadcast on the west coast.
Now…back to Berlin. In addition to the mobile unit camera, three state-of-the-art Iconoscope cameras are also used, among them Telefunken’s ‘Olympic Cannon’, which earns its nickname due to the large lens. There was also a single Fernseh experimental camera there using the Farnsworth Image Dissector tube.
There was a built in control room in the stadium, which fed the coverage to two special lines that went directly to the Berlin TV tower for broadcast. Therefore, there was no need for an electronic television remote unit, in the classic sense.
These cameras broadcast eight hours of moving images per day. There are 75 television sets in Berlin, most of them in the 27 public television parlors. There are two other parlous in Potsdam and Leipzig. At the time, the television broadcasts are sensational events for the audience. But they are barely comparable with today’s public viewing: the screens on the television sets are barely larger than a modern tablet PC display. Thanks for all the help in bringing interesting new information to light! -Bobby Ellerbee
Here is the story I wrote for the Archive Of American Television site…home of the Emmy TV Legends video collection and histories. Enjoy and share! It’s quite an interesting story! -Bobby Ellerbee
On April 14,1956, this prototype Ampex VTR called “Mark IV” started a whole new era in television. In the photo, you see the Ampex Videotape Team…the men who created the VR-1000 and revolutionized broadcasting. Pictured with this six man team is the unit Ampex took to Chicago for the legendary demonstration at the 1956 NAB Convention, to the amazement of all who attended.
In the team photo, Fred Pfost is on the far left. Here is Fred’s description of the events of the week of the demonstration in which Ampex took almost 100 orders for the $50,000 VR-1000.
“On the Saturday, April 14, two days before the convention started, we demonstrated the recorder for about 300 CBS affiliates meeting at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. I recorded (from behind a curtain) the opening speech of Bill Lodge, V.P. of CBS, who described all the activities that CBS had been involved in during the past year, and his announcement of a big surprise, that was about to happen. After I rewound the tape and pushed the play button for this group of executives, they saw the instantaneous replay of the speech.”
“There were about ten seconds of total silence, until they suddenly realized just what they were seeing on the twenty video monitors located around the room. Pandemonium broke out with wild clapping and cheering for five full minutes. This was the first time in history that a large group (outside of Ampex) had ever seen a high quality, instantaneous replay of any event. The experience still brings tears to my eyes when I recall this event.”
“During the week of the convention, the Ampex display area was packed, all day, every day. Orders came so fast and furious, that the Ampex sales staff was writing orders on cocktail napkins.”
It took Ampex a year to fill just the orders taken at the convention. If memory serves me right, CBS got the first 5, NBC got the second 5 and ABC, the third 5, with more on order for all 3 networks. I think CBS put 3 at TVC, and had 2 in NYC. NBC put 3 at Burbank, 1 in NYC and 1 went to RCA Labs in Princeton, with RCA and Ampex starting to share RCA’s color tape ability. I think ABC put 3 at Prospect and 2 in NYC. -Bobby Ellerbee
This is a rare look inside CBS Studio 33, or what many call The Cronkite Newsroom. Although Dan Rather was now the anchor, Studio 33 is where Walter Cronkite first reported from, when they moved to the Broadcast Center in 1964.
Prior to the move, the newsroom and set was on the 23rd floor of the Graybar Building which was next to Grand Central, and the show was switched out of the old Studio 42. For the home viewer, it could have been a little hard to tell as the 33 set and the Graybar set were very similar. Even the studio buildout of the new 33 had the same layout including the famous fishbowl office.
About a year after this video, the news moved to Studio 47. Today, Studio 33 is occupied by CBS Radio and across the hall in the space once occupied by the 33 control room, you will find the “60 Minutes” set.
The black man floor managing the show in the studio is CBS News veteran James Wall. Interestingly, his counterpart at NBC News was another black man, Fred Lights who started with Dave Garroway on “Today” and floor managed NBC’s news shows from Huntley-Brinkley to Tom Brokaw.
The cameras here are Hitachi SK 110s and show us how frantic the pace is just before and during air. Stuffing a day of the world’s news into 22 minutes is not an easy task, and back then, the real news took up most of the time…not just the first two segments like now. -Bobby Ellerbee
This week, “The Tonight Show Experience” will open at Universal Studios Orlando, with Jimmy Fallon and company on hand all week for the grand opening. Among the stars in the first floor “Tonight” museum, are rare artifacts from all the “Tonight” show’s hosts and a very special item from “Tonight” creator, Pat Weaver.
About a year and a half ago, Universal contacted me about buying a few museum quality cameras for their new attraction. Little did they know I had the key to the highway! Here is a shot of me at home with the camera a few years back. To tell the truth, the only other place I would have considered a good home for her, where she could be seen and appreciated, was at NBC New York, but this is actually pretty close. As you’ll see in these and in the linked photos, the interior of the Orlando exhibit is a very good mock up of 30 Rock’s interior. Here is a nice spread of about 100 images to look through. https://www.flickr.com/photos/getreadytoride/sets/72157677663135424/?share=mail
By the way, don’t pay attention to the signage on the TK30 in these pix…I contacted Friday and they will be correcting card soon. I also sent a second camera to Orlando. A Sony BVP 900 SD camera from Jay Leno’s pre HD years.
The main attraction for the kids is the 3D thrill ride “Race Through New York”, but in the soft opening dry runs, many seem much more interested in the museum level displays. The original thought was that the Weaver TK30 would be in the Steve Allen era showcase and the Sony in the Leno showcase. Things changed, and for the better. Now they both have their own showcases in a very interesting neighborhood…Carson’s Carnac turban lives next door and Jimmy’s Thank You notes are everywhere. What more could anyone want?
To the Universal props and creative departments…VERY WELL DONE! To the “Tonight” show crew and staff in Florida this week…”break a leg”! To NBC and Universal, MANY THANKS! -Bobby Ellerbee
It was on this day in 1955 NBC Burbank was dedicated…two and a half years after it opened October 4, 1952. Why the long wait? It was all about color.
The new NBC black and white facilities at Burbank were Studios 1 and 3 and were in heavy use from the start, but until the FCC approved RCA’s Dot Sequential, Compatible Color in December of ’53, everything color was on hold. In the east, NBC’s first color facility was The Colonial Theater which came on line as an experimental facility in March 1953. NBC Brooklyn 1 was their second color studio witch debuted September 4, 1954.
Burbank’s color studios were added one by one. Studio 2 was built first, followed by Studio 4 and were hailed as the only television studios built just for color. I would argue that Studios 1 and 3 were certainly designed for color too, but I guess it made for a better story the other way. Below is the New York Times article on the Burbank dedication and color maiden voyage with a 90 minute special called “Entertainment 1955” marking the opening of Studio 2, while Studio 4’s foundation was being poured.
Above, color chart testing on the new RCA TK41s in Studio 2. On May 30, 1955 Humphrey Bogart would make his first and last live appearance on television in Studio 2 when he, Lauren Bacall and Henry Fonda starred in “The Petrified Forest”, the first “Producers Showcase” live color drama from NBC Color City West. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
In case you have never seen my ebooks on the NBC, CBS and ABC network studios in both New York and Hollywood, start here!
There are over 700 pages of rare history, photos and first hand accounts and…the only timelines ever created for these studios. These reports are also the only research papers ever to focus exclusively on the facilities themselves. This is Volume 1 of 2 that covers NBC New York with a separate report on NBC’s west coast studios. Same for CBS and ABC’s studios.
In the photo, we see one of the earliest known photos of Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” in NBC Studio 6B which had just been converted from radio to TV. Enjoy and Share! -Bobby Ellerbee
On October 5, 1945, “Meet the Press” debuted on The Mutual Radio Network, hosted by it’s creator Martha Roundtree. On November 6, 1947, “‘Meet The Press” debuted on NBC Television as a half hour, Saturday night current affairs show hosted by Roundtree. It was a “sustaining” program, which meant there was not a sponsor. In June of 1949, Rountree was told by NBC that because they could not find a sponsor, the show would be canceled.
Later that month, David Sarnoff agreed to the terms of Pat Weaver’s contract and hired him as NBC’s first real head of the television department. Weaver ‘s job, as Vice President was to oversee television and become the director of the new television network. Weaver had told the NBC executives who hired him, “I won’t come to NBC just to sell time to ad agencies. I’ll come only if we can create our own shows and own them, and if we can sell every kind of advertising to support the program service.”
On his first day, he came across the recent memo that canceled “Meet The Press”. In one of his first official duties, he personally called Roundtree and re-hired the show as an NBC production. To date, “MTP” is America’s longest running television program.
Martha Rountree started as a reporter at The Tampa Tribune, but she wasn’t reporting on social occasions or homemaking. As a kind of rebel from the start, her duties included writing a sports column under the name “M. J. Rountree,” with Tribune readers none the wiser as to the sex of the journalist who was, after all, writing in a field dominated by men.
A local CBS station was impressed enough by her work that they gave her a chance to write for radio, at which she excelled. From there, she headed north to New York, where she wrote ad copy, but Rountree was not comfortable playing so minor a part of an industry she felt held greater opportunities for her.
“I got the ideas, worked them out; other people got the credit,” she lamented. “I wanted to produce myself. To prove that she meant business, she and her sister Ann, opened a production firm called Radio House, which prepared transcribed programs and singing commercials.
1945 was Rountree’s banner year. She made her mark on radio in a big way, selling the idea for two different panel shows to the Mutual Radio Network, premiering them a day apart in October. One was ‘Leave It to the Girls’, the other was ‘Meet The Press‘ which debuted on October 5, 1945.
Although frequently credited as a co-creation of Rountree and Lawrence E. Spivak, publisher and editor of American Mercury magazine, authoritative sources adamantly state that it was Rountree who developed the premise on her own, with Spivak joining up as co producer and business partner in the enterprise after the show had already debuted.
On November 6, 1947, while still on Mutual Radio, the show came to NBC Television. The first guest was James Farley, who served as Postmaster General, Democratic National Committee chairman and campaign manager to Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the first two terms of the New Deal Administration.
The first host was its creator, Martha Rountree (seen at the top of the page with Sen Kefauver), the program’s only full time female moderator to date. She stepped down on November 1, 1953 and until Ned Brooks could take over, her friend Deena Clark filled in. In this rare shot from NBC’s Colonial Theater on February 14. 1954, we see Deena Clark hosting with Sen. John F. Kennedy as the guest on this rare color presentation of the show.
MEET THE PRESS — “Senator John F. Kennedy” Aired 02/14/1954 — Pictured: (l-r) Marquis Childs, May Craig, Ned Brooks, Lawrence Spivak, Miss Clark, Senator John F. Kennedy
Rountree was succeeded by Ned Brooks (shown below with guest Sen. Joseph McCarthy), who remained as moderator until his retirement on December 26, 1965. Although Spivak became the moderator on January 1, 1966, he did not really want the job. Max Schindler said, “Spivak didn’t want to moderate…he wanted Edwin Neuman, but NBC could not spare him, so he reluctantly took over”. He retired on November 9, 1975, on a special one-hour edition that featured, for the first time, a sitting president, Gerald Ford, as the guest.
Below, Lawrence Spivak with West German Chancellor Willie Brandt.
The next week, Bill Monroe, previously a weekly panelist like Spivak took over as moderator and stayed until June 2, 1984. For the next seven and a half years, the program then went through a series of hosts as it struggled in the ratings against ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley”. Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb (as co-moderators) followed Monroe for a year, followed by Chris Wallace from 1987 to 1988. Garrick Utley hosted ‘Meet the Press‘ from 1989 through December 1, 1991 at which time Tim Russert took over, and not long after that, the show went to a one hour format.
Russert’s untimely death gave David Gregory the seat, and now Chuck Todd is host.
Rountree died on August 23, 1999, in Washington, where she had made her name as one of the key figures in political reporting. Tim Russert, summed up her status in the medium by declaring, “She was a news pioneer who helped create a national treasure, Meet the Press.” Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
Here, we will see very rare color home movie footage of Colgate hosts Martin & Lewis, Abbott & Costello and Eddie Cantor all arriving at The El Capitan Theater, also a rare color rehearsal shot of Dean and Jerry – plus kinescope footage of the sketch that night. But that’s not all!
Let’s start with this Archive of American Television, Emmy Legend interview with Jerry talking about the Colgate days, and how he and Dean always beat Ed Sullivan.
Next up, in a rare happening, three of the five (rotating weekly) hosts of “Colgate Comedy Hour” are caught in a color home movie arriving at The El Capitan Theater for rehearsal of the celebration of the 100th episode show. Most likely, Hope and O’connor were doing their part in New York, as the show not only rotated hosts, but origination cities.
NBC’s El Capitan Theater was the west coast home of “The Colgate Comedy Hour”. Just before NBC leased it in 1952, Richard Nixon’s “Checkers Speech” was filmed here. In the fall of ’63, ABC bought the theater and renamed it “The Jerry Lewis Theater” which is where his ill fated 13 week show was done from. By January of ’54, this had become “The Hollywood Palace” and was where the show of the same name came from. In late 1964, this is where ABC’s first live color came from. When the fall sesaon of Place debuted, it was before 4 RCA TK41 color cameras. The control truck and cameras were on lease from RCA. In late ’65, a new control room was built with all Norelco equipment. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
With the recent receipt of new images and data, this story has been revised and updated June 27, 2021.
This is a combination of some newly discovered details with a few very rare and little known places and events that no one that I know of has ever woven together to tell this historic tale. I have written about all of these elements separately, but now, can finally combine them all to tell a broader, richer story.
To set the mood, look up top at the 1928 image of an actor/model (manikin) in front of a huge camera like object. Here are some surprises about this image…first, most assume this is a camera shooting through a wooden frame with spotlights. Actually the “spotlights” are photo imaging cells and make the picture. The “camera” is an arc light projector with a rotating disc, which at the time was the basis of mechanical television. I can tell by the decorative parlor, the top photo with the male mannequin was taken at RCA’s second home of W2XBS at 411 5th Avenue.
By the way, this is the Alexanderson system made by General Electric and I have some new photos to add. In this photo below (circa 1927), we see Dr. Alexanderson with RCA’s pioneer in imagery Ray Kell. It is the same system we see in the top photo and this is thought to be the first mechanical television apparatus used at RCA.
Above, we see Ray Kell again (left) with Dr. Ernst Alexanderson with his second and final mechanical scanning television apparatus which was built and demonstrated in Albany NY in 1928. Below, we see NBC and television’s first announcer (yes, a woman) Betty Goodwin taking a look at the original Alexanderson scanning device which is on display in the RCA Pavilion of the 1939 Worlds Fair.
RCA’s very first research facility was at 7 Van Cortlandt Park South, an address I was only able to nail down in January after years of searching. RCA built it in 1924, and until RCA bought the Victor Company plant in Camden in 1930, this was the home of RCA research and development. This is the first home of W2XBS, RCA’s experimental television station that is today, WNBC.
On page 10 is a rare article on 7 Van Cortlandt from a 1956 RCA Radio Age Magazine. Much of this new information is drawn from there, but there are many other interesting aspects of the period to read about there.
The W2XBS call letters were granted in 1928, and the call letters listed 7 Van Cortlandt as the official address, but shortly after, Theodore Smith and his TV team had come up with a 5,000 watt transmitter and they needed to move. Fortunately, RCA Photophone had an office in the 411 5th Avenue building, just down the street from their new corporate HQ at 711 5th Avenue.
Photophone was RCA’s name for their sound to film technology and they had a new studio there plus some extra room which is where Felix The Cat first graced the airwaves. The Felix tests more than likely began shortly after the move to 411.
On March 22, 1929 the Radio Corporation of America announced that “television images are now being broadcast daily from 7 to 9 P.M.” The company’s vice president, Dr. A. N. Goldsmith said that the program was intended to give “experimenters an opportunity to look in on the development work, which, it is contemplated, will in due course evolve into a service to the public on a commercial basis similar to that of sound broadcasting.”
Near the bottom of this rare article on the 411 Building’s history is detail confirming the RCA article dates and the next steps in experimental television’s history.
Thanks to the RCA article, we can finally put a date of 1930 to the famous Felix photo, but we don’t know if it was taken at 411 or at W2XBS’s next stop…the Roof Garden Theater atop The Amsterdam Theater where the testing moved in late 1930. It remained there until operations were move to the top of the Empire State Building in 1933. My money’s on the photo being taken at 411 which is also shown here. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
How Television Made Basketball Fans Mad About March!
It’s “that time again”, when back to back college basketball games are center stage for a few weeks, but without Eddie Einhorn, March Madness, the way we know it, may have never happened.
Before we get to how all this happened, here is an interesting footnote. Originally, “March Madness,” was the term used to describe the excitement surrounding the Illinois State High School Basketball Tournaments, which began in 1908. The phrase was coined by Henry V. Porter in an essay that appeared in the Illinois High School Athlete Journal in March of 1939.
In the clip below, both Elvin Hayes and Lou Alcindor – the competing stars of the game – talk about that game, that day and the odd feeling of playing in the middle of the Astrodome field, 100 feet from the nearest fans. And, there were fans! Over 50,000 there that day, which was another first, but I’ll fill you in on how this became the first ever nationally televised basketball game.
As it was called then, this “Game Of The Century” was the event that lit the fire to televise this annual event nationally, and bring more basketball to television.
The road to the NCAA basketball finals as we know it today, began in Houston at the Astrodome on Saturday, January 20, 1968 when the University of Houston Cougars hosted the UCLA Bruins. Neither team had lost a game that season, UCLA was 13-0, with a 47 game win streak, while University of Houston was 16-0, with a 17 game win streak, and had won 48 consecutive home games. Along with stars from both teams, the game featured, superstars Elvin Hayes at UH and Lou Alcindor, (who we know better as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) at UCLA.
Before 1968, college basketball was not popular with national TV audiences, and was mostly only televised in local TV markets that had large universities.
Entrepreneur, Eddie Einhorn knew that when he began to broadcast college basketball games on regional radio stations in the late ’50s.
Having scraped up $27,500 to buy the rights to the 1968 NCAA championship game, Einhorn decided this huge match up between two undefeated teams, UCLA and Houston, needed to be on television, and went about the task of putting together a network of TV stations to carry the game. To better his chances, he only pitched the coverage to TV’s “red headed step children”…UHF stations, who needed eyeballs badly. 150 stations signed up.
Along with broadcast support, Houston’s KHTV supplied the color mobile unit with three GE cameras, while KPRC provided the operational personnel for the cameras. KPRC’s Mark Davis directed the telecast. Einhorn hired Dick Enberg & LSU & NBA great, Bob Pettit to call the game.
By putting together this “Game of the Century” broadcast between the Houston Cougars and UCLA Bruins, Einhorn changed college basketball forever. This was the game that made college basketball a television broadcast commodity.
By 1980, Einhorn had sold his interest in the network and became the head of CBS Sports. Eddie went on to become chairman of The Chicago White Sox, but was not finished changing sports broadcasting, as his SportsVision network debuted in 1984. -Bobby Ellerbee
March 19, 1953…The First Televised Academy Awards Ceremony
Although we have an interesting video, let’s start with the pictures. That first shot of the NBC cameraman on the crane with an umbrella is taking the first shot we see in the first video as it was rainy night at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood.
The next shot is the Pantages stage and the huge screen is part of NBC’s “go big or go home” attitude on the television coverage which was a live bi-coastal broadcast that required almost as many AT&T and NBC techs – as there were people at the theaters. It was an oversized affair sponsored by RCA, with the network’s Bob Hope as MC in Hollywood and Frederic March hosting in New York. There, the show was coming from the home of “Your Show Of Shows,” The International Theater on Columbus Circle.
In the nest to last photo, we see The International stage with another huge RCA projection screen hanging above the proscenium. The last image is an article on what many at home thought was the “world’s largest TV set” that was seen on the Pantages stage. It was actually an RCA theater size rear screen projection unit, while the one in New York was a front screen projection unit which as a permanent part of the International Theater. Most theaters that were being used as TV studios had them.
In the video, we see the show open and Bob poking fun at television and everything else. By the way, since this is a year before Hollywood finally began selling some of their films to television, the sting of names of early movie stars (4:07) is a left handed reference to the boycott, which grows more bold.
March 19, 1953 and March 19, 1954…Red Letter Days For Compatible Color
On March 19, 1953 RCA and NBC’s new multimillion dollar, experimental color facility at The Colonial Theater went online. Work began in the fall of 1952 with some stage renovation and then the installation of the new control and equipment rooms.
The Colonial was equipped with four prototype RCA TK40 color cameras and chains, an all color telecine system, all kinds of new experimental lighting fixtures, monitors and tons of new synchronizing equipment.
The Colonial remained an experimental color facility until Thursday, December 17, 1953. That day, the FCC gave it’s approval of compatible color which made the Colonial the center of NBC’s color universe.
Without The Colonial, a year long string of firsts, that followed, would not have been possible. That sting started with a bang just 14 days later!
On January 1, NBC put their two new color mobile units (seen above) in service with the first ever coast to coast colorcast of The Rose Parade from Pasadena, California. In 22 color capable cities, it was seen in color, but in glorious compatible black and white everywhere else. The Colonial served as a master control center.
February 16, 1954: NBC transmitted the first newscast in color… “The Camel News Caravan”, including the first integration of 16-mm color film into a live program, was done at The Colonial.
On March 4, 1954, the first shipments of RCA TK40s, and associated studio equipment was made from RCA’s plant in Camden, N.J. This was after two years of testing of the TK40 prototypes at NBC’s Colonial Theater.
Exactly one year after The Colonial went online, on March 19, 1954, the first colorcast of a boxing match from Madison Square Garden, was presented by NBC and was compatible color’s first ever sports event broadcast. The main event pitted Philadelphia middleweight Joey Giardello against Willie Troy.
March 25, 1954: Production of RCA’s first commercial color TV sets, the CT 100s, equipped with a 15-inch picture tube began at Bloomington, Indiana.
June 25, 1954: NBC made the first network transmission of 35-mm color film, on “The Mrs. USA” program from The Colonial.
July 8 – Aug. 19: NBC aired the first network color series, “The Marriage”, a situation comedy with Jessica Tandy and Hume Cronyn, from The Colonial.
July 15, 1954: RCA announced development of a new and improved 21-inch color kinescope with a picture area of 255 square inches.
Finally, NBC’s second major color facility came on line. On September 12, 1954, NBC presented the first of many 90 minute color spectaculars with the broadcast of “Satins and Spurs” starring Betty Hutton. That was the first production from NBC’s new Brooklyn Studio I.
September 15, 1954: RCA demonstrated its new 21-inch color picture tube and a simplified color TV receiver.
Oct. 14 – Dec. 30: “The Ford Theatre” was the first sponsored color film series to be presented in color on a regular basis. It was broadcast on The Colonial’s color telecine equipment.
November 28,1954: First two-hour color production of a Shakespeare play, “Macbeth” on “The Hallmark Hall of Fame” was done at Brooklyn I.
December 1, 1954: RCA began commercial production of color TV sets with a new 21-inch picture tube. Quite a year, wouldn’t you say? Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
How The First Music Video Package Helped Create “American Bandstand”
The Snader Telescriptions were not only the first ever music videos…these classic music shorts also played a direct role in the creation of “American Bandstand”!
We’ll get to the Bandstand part after this short fact packed video on the history of the Snader project. It is told by the world’s first VJ, Gene Norman who introduced all the Snader video acts, and Duke Goldstone, who directed them.
If Duke’s name is not familiar, his work is! He also directed the Speedy Alka Seltzer and Green Giant commercials, and many of the early musical variety shows for stars like Liberace, Frankie Lane and even Betty White’s first series, “Life With Elizabeth”.
THE BANDSTAND LINKAGE
If you refer back to my March 5th article on how Howard Hughes broke the Hollywood movie boycott on selling films to television in 1954, you realize that about the only films US stations could get before that were from the UK, and they weren’t really that good to start with. When the price on those British movie package prices went up, WFIL in Philadelphia decided they had had enough and went a different route.
They pulled the plug on their afternoon movie and replaced it with a show called “Parade Of Stars” which was built around the Snader Telescriptions music video package that they got at a very good price. That show started in 1951 and was hosted by the WFIL sports director Tom Moorehead.
In 1952, WFIL radio personality Bob Horn was hired to take over the Stars show. When Horn took over, the station started to let Horn’s radio fans – neighborhood teens, come in and watch him do the TV show and listen to the music, but this was all off camera. Eventually, more kids showed up and even began to dance off camera – but that gave them an idea!
Why not let Horn do what disc jockeys do – play records, and let the kids do what they were already doing – dance, and put it all on camera?
So, on October 2, 1952, Horn and his kids left the Snader package behind and moved from the small Studio C, to the much larger Studio B where a new show called “Bandstand” was born. The show grew and in ’56 when Horn left, he was replaced by Dick Clark.
On August 5, 1957 the show was renamed “American Bandstand” when The American Broadcasting Company took the show nation wide. This was ABC first major building block for their daytime programming.
Just for fun, here is part of the sales pitch clip that was sent to local stations.
From the Eyes Of A Generation’s archives, here a well done “Atlantic Magazine” story on the ladies that were both known as “Miss Color TV”, NBC’s Marie McNamara, and CBS’s Patty Painter. This also covers the progressions and setbacks encountered by both networks, in their race to bring color to the small screen. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
The white women known in the 1950s as “Miss Color TV” reinforced longstanding hierarchies of gender and race that were built into generations of technologies.
A Huge Show Few Remember Gave Us The First Use Of Live Chromakey
NBC’s “Matinee Theater”…October 31, 1955 – June 27, 1958
This morning, I sat down to write a story on the first ever use of a live chromakey effect on network television. That happened on this show, “Matinee Theater” in June of 1957, but…then I realized what the show was and was as surprised as you may be as you read about that part too.
In a nutshell, “Matinee Theater” was five, live, one hour color plays a week from NBC Burbank, which aired at 3 eastern and noon in the west. All the other live anthology series were weekly, but this undertaking was on every weekday with a whole new play! Let that sink in a minute.
The show’s creator, Albert McCleery hired five directors to oversee production of five separate casts, working on five different teleplays. The show featured over 7,000 actors in over 660 productions which were generally high quality performances.
The show won an Emmy in 1956, but also won over RCA and their dealers because this live color show was on the air during store hours and customers could see it. “Howdy Doody” was the first daily color show and that change happened on September 12, 1955.
At this link to The Archive Of American Television’s interview site, Barbara Billingsley, Robert Kulp, Leonard Nimoy and others talk about their appearances on “Matinee Theater” and how the show was done. http://www.emmytvlegends.org/interviews/shows/matinee-theater#
Now for the chromakey part of the story….
Motion picture production had been using compositing for years prior to the invention of television, but it was an involved process requiring optical printers and intermediate film mattes, hardly suitable for the immediacy of live television.
In July of 1957, chroma key had its first on-air test on one of NBC Burbank’s most ambitious projects, “Matinee Theater”. The source material varied, but often it was an adaptation of some famous literary work.
One of those shows was s television version of the H.G. Wells classic “The Invisible Man,” which lent itself perfectly for the first live use of chroma key. When the title character’s hands and head were wrapped in blue and he stood in front of a blue screen, the chroma key amplifier would replace the blue parts of the video with an image from another camera. All that would be seen in the composite shot was the man’s clothing in front of scenery being shot by the background camera, thus making him appear to be invisible.
Chromakey was developed by Frank Gaskins, NBC Burbank’s technical operations supervisor and Milt Altman, graphics arts supervisor. Some stories say they came across the effect by accident when some TK41 camera maintenance was underway and all of the blue balloons on the set “dissapeared”.
For the real story, here, on page 8 is an article called “Studio: The World…NBC Introduces Chromakey” in RCA’s Electronic Age magazine. Enjoy and please share! -Bobby Ellerbee
On April 14,1956, this prototype Ampex VTR called “Mark IV” started a whole new era in television. In the photo, you see the Ampex Videotape Team…the men who created the VR-1000 and revolutionized broadcasting. Pictured with this six man team is the unit Ampex took to Chicago for the legendary demonstration at the 1956 NAB Convention, to the amazement of all who attended.
