ABC’s Sacrificial Lambs…GE PC 7 Made Into First ABC Mini Cam
I was digging through some old photos this morning and came across this and it reminded me to set the record straight on ABC’s first homemade mini cameras that we see in use here on ‘Wide World Of Sports’
A while back I had mentioned that they were made from RCA TK30s, but I had forgotten about this picture from ABC veteran cameraman Don ‘Peaches’ Langford. ABC New York had sent a couple of GE PC 7s to LA, but they had no use for them. The man with the big PC7s is Jim Angel and I’m not sure, but it may have been Angel that built the ABC mini cams using parts from these two GE PC7s.
By the way, Don is the one with the bald wig goofing with the mini cam and doing his impersonation of the cameras regular operator who was “follicly challenged”. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Why both cameramen were using rubber caps?
I remember completely destroying the ABC network every Saturday in the fall and putting it back together practically one station at a time. There wad a closed circuit every Friday at 4pm with an ABC engineer and one from AT&T long lines describing the reconfiguration for the games and how joins would occur when a game ended as not all stations connected to one game would join the same one that was still in play after their game ended. To many memories from 40+Yeats ago.
Any official reference as to when this camera was put into service? I do remember Curt Gowdy making a mention of it during the AFL Championship Game (Bills vs. Chargers) on December 26, 1964.