An Interesting Story about TK41s and American Bandstand
An Interesting Story about TK41s and American Bandstand
I’ve often wondered if TK41s were ever used to shoot American Bandstand and I have found out that the answer is yes, but only for a couple of weeks, and it wasn’t in LA…it was at WFIL in Philadelphia.
ABC was really the last of the big 3 to go full color, to their credit though, they did broadcast the ‘Jetsons’ in color as early as ’62, but only by taking the film to KNBC to feed them the color signal as they did not have a color telecine chain till a couple of years later.
But back to Philadelphia. In 1958, WFIL went color and got a few TK41s. They decided to use them on American Bandstand because they could at least feed the color signal live there in Philly even if ABC network didn’t ‘do’ color. Studio B was 80 x 42 x 24, but with the bleachers and set, there was a lot less space to dance. For years, the show was shot with 3 RCA TK10s, and later TK11s, and that worked out fine, but the TK41s, were so big and took so much room to swing around (remember the camera from pan handle to lens tip is 5 feet long), shooting with even 2 took up so much of the dance floor that they went to a single TK41.
It didn’t take long for everyone to figure out that the new 1 camera color show was nowhere near as good as the old 3 camera black and white one, so they went back to the TK10s. To make the decision easier, ABC refused to take the color signal about the same time the local producers began to miss their choice of shots.
It must have been hot in there to have a monitor without a cabinet! I like that round CRT tube too!
I remember reading that Bandstand had one TK-41 and switched between the color camera and the b&w cameras.
I have also seen Bandstand shots from Philly with TK-30’s
…HEY ! ! ! ..but how ’bout the monitor WITHOUT A CABINET ! ! ..bare bones CRT, chassis ! ..WTF ! ! !
…in July of 1955, WOAI-TV had a couple of TK-41’s ..I was in the hospital dealing with contracting polio so I was unaware of this going on ..I did view archive photos of the 41’s with WOAI-TV on the sides of the camera ..if I can obtain the photos, I will try to post them ..obviously, with the lack of local color TV sets in San Antonio, WOAI didn’t keep the cameras for very long ..will try to obtain the photo( s ).