Last Of The Mahicans…Retired 2010

On January 2, 2014 - TV History

Last Of The Mahicans…Retired 2010

These are RCA TK47s, the last full size camera made by the company that had pioneered color television. It debuted in 1978 and was in wide use with over 500 in operation by 1982. In 2010, WHKY in Hickory NC finally retired their TK47s. Station owner Tom Long had about a dozen that came from NBC Burbank and with parts from some and a stash of Plumbicon tubes, he kept them making great pictures right up till their last day. These photos are from their last year in service.



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15 Comments

  1. Martin Möwald January 8, 2014

    Benny Hill funniest man

  2. Josh Wilson January 3, 2014

    TK47 was the first Camera I operated.

  3. Edward Dabrowski January 3, 2014

    At WMAQ in Chicago we were running TK-44A’s until 1987 when we got the Ikegami’s.

  4. Luiz Marxsen January 2, 2014

    One TK-47 with another color scheme and Schneider lenses:

  5. Tom Edwards January 2, 2014

    We had three TK-47’s in our News studio at WJBK-TV in Detroit. It took a couple of RCA field engineers weeks to get them working correctly, but when they did, the cameras looked great.

  6. Mark Gulbrandsen January 2, 2014

    I’m not sure about the economics of running these cameras this long. The station I worked at in the early 80’s had five TK-45’s that I maintained. It was VERY expensive to keep them operating.

  7. William David French Jr January 2, 2014

    I hope at least some of these have been saved by collectors.

  8. Michael Gismondi January 2, 2014

    Learned how to repair TV Cameras on the TK47’s on Saturday Night Live starting in 1980.

  9. Alex Paramo January 2, 2014

    my favorite camera

  10. Chris Thornton January 2, 2014

    This does not surprise me, RCA built great gear and built it to last! These cameras were probably only retired because they would not make 16×9 High Definition pictures required for today’s digital television. These cameras outlasted their technology!

  11. Ian Bartlett January 2, 2014

    Just think of what those 47s saw……any chance they did some time on the Tonight Show? As a game show geek, I can’t help but think these got used on a lot of the shows that they did there….”Scrabble”, “Super Password”, “Sale of the Century”, etc…..with the NBC provenance, I sure hope they found a new home!

  12. Anthony Tarantino January 2, 2014

    Started doing Camera on the Donahue show in 1987 using TK47 with a crank Zoom .

  13. Albert J. McGilvray January 2, 2014

    I saw a couple of them in Anchorman 2.

  14. Casey Hawkins January 2, 2014

    Wow! That’s a long life! This story makes me wonder what he replaced them with….

  15. Martin Möwald January 2, 2014

    Hello, i think we had in Germany tk47 in use by the station ZDF in the New stationcenter in Mainz