June 25, 1951…The First Commercial Colorcast Is Done By CBS
June 25, 1951…The First Commercial Colorcast Is Done By CBS
Sixty three years ago today, the first commercial color telecast took place as CBS transmitted a one-hour special from New York to four other cities.The whole story and 20 rare photos are at this link
https://eyesofageneration.com/cbs-field-sequential-color-cameras-at-studio-57/
Although there is not a lot of information CBS Studio 57, we do know that it was so hot that day, the floors buckled in a few places. The facility was also known as The Pace Theater and was located at 1280 Fifth Avenue. I think this studio was the home of all the CBS Field Sequential Color testing and after the RCA Dot Sequential Color System won, CBS left there around 1953.
As you will see in the article, there appears to have been three modified RCA TK10s in use as Field Sequential Color cameras…more on this in the next post. Enjoy and share!
I have a pet peeve with websites like the one where the CBS images were posted, especially when it’s an organization like Life. It is often a simple matter of a little adjustment in Photoshop to correct the image so it looks like what was intended as opposed to what it has degraded into.
Invitation for a public viewing of “Premiere” at Jordan Marsh in Boston.
Ad for CBS color sets from later that summer, about a month before the plug was pulled.
You’d think LIFE would have done all the article photos in color.
Here’s a link to the Life photo archive of color screen shots made by veteran photographer Ralph Morse of that famous broadcast. http://images.google.com/hosted/life/d68bfb3be65815c8.html In some of the photos the color is weak or non-existent. There has been some discussion on Videokarma as to the reason for that, and one person did some color correction and improved the images here: http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=257896&highlight=cbs+color+screen+shots