NBC Studio 8H, May 1951

NBC Studio 8G was converted in 1948, but as NBC Radio’s largest studio, 8H was not converted till 1950. This image is from the May 1951 edition of Popular Science and had just changed it’s title from “America’s largest radio studio” to “America’s largest television studio”. Television was not new to 8H though…from 1947 and into 1948, ‘The Voice Of Firestone’ musical program was done from here with cameras controlled from 8G. Below in Comments is a photo from one of the Firestone shows.

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The Norelco Shaver Christmas Commercials…Then & Now

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUQycfgCjr0
The link above is to the original spot from the 60s, and below is the new version…both still done in stop action Claymation, but today’s have a bit of CGI help too. The voice from the 1960s through the early 2000s was the legendary Peter Thomas. These were as much a part of the holidays as anything to many of us.

Philips Norelco’s Santa is back. It’s been years since his last appearance, but this holiday season Santa is all about his new ride, the SensoTouch 3D. Learn…

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The True Story Of “Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer”

This news article was written by Robert May…the man who wrote the book for Montgomery Ward. This is quite a touching story. What is not mentioned here is that in the months that it took to write it, he was raising his 4 year old daughter almost alone as his wife was dying of cancer. The link should take you to a close up of the story which is in the top left corner and accompanied by a photo of Mr. May. Enjoy!

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=a4YlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=wfIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1023,722492

Gettysburg Times – Google News Archive Search

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Judy Garland Christmas Special…1963

From Studio 43 at CBS Television City, here’s the whole on hour special complete with commercials and notice how FEW there were back then, only 8 minutes per hour. I think this was shot with their new Marconi Mark IV b/w cameras. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzCL3FM9dDc

In this charming live holiday TV special Judy is joined by her children, Liza Minnelli and Lorna and Joey Luft, and guest stars Jack Jones and Mel Torme. The…

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Fred Mertz? Almost…

This is James Gleason who you may remember best for his roll in the classic, ‘Here Comes Mr. Jordan’. He also co wrote ‘The Broadway Melody’, the second film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Gleason worked with Lucille Ball on ‘Miss Grant Takes Richmond’ in 1948 and when it came time to cast ‘I Love Lucy’, she suggested Gleason and Gale Gordon for the roll of Fred Mertz. Both had commitments at the time and were not available for the first few shows and that’s when William Frawley won the roll of Fredrick Hobart Mertz.

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Jeopardy! : A Fred Westbrook Photo

This is another shot of the show from NBC Studio 6A. The show’s host, Art Fleming has his back to us at one of the producers does a pre show warm up with the audience. This was quite likely a three or four camera show, no matter where it came from…6A or 8G. NBC moved shows around quite a bit from season to season depending on their production loads. Over it’s long run (’64-’75) at NBC, I think 8G was more home base for Jeopardy! than 6A. The camera is an RCA TK44.

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‘Scrooged’ Paramount Pictures, 1988

I’ll bet you never recognized all four of the street carolers insulted by Bill Murray…I didn’t either. The leader is Paul Shaffer and the others are Miles Davis, David Sanborn and Larry Carlton, three of the biggest names in jazz. The names of the Christmas television shows from the IBC Network, of which clips were shown were “Scrooge”, “Father Loves Beaver”, “The Night the Reindeer Died” and “Bob Goulet’s Old Fashioned Cajun Christmas”. The network’s promotional slogan for these TV shows was “Yule Love It!”. Sam Kinison was originally slated to play the part of The Ghost of Christmas Past but the part eventually went to David Johansen due to his friendship with Bill Murray. The cameras were RCA TK44s.

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The Chapman Sidewinder

This little workhorse debuted in the 70s and with it’s 6 foot riser arm could get a camera lens 9 feet high and the arm could go all the way to floor level. It can crab and dolly too. You see more of these on the west coast than the east for some reason and ABC seemed to use them a lot at the Prospect studios. Looks like a fun ride. The camera is a Norelco PC60.

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‘Truth Or Consequences’: A Fred Westbrook Photo

Did you know this was the first game show ever to air on television? It’s true! ‘Truth or Consequences’ aired as a one-time experiment on the first day of New York station WNBT’s commercial program schedule on July 1, 1941. It was hosted by Ralph Edwards who created and hosted the game in 1940 on NBC radio. The show did not appear on TV again until 1950, when CBS debuted the show which ran there till ’54. NBC picked up the show and did it from Burbank and on On January 22, 1957, the show became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape; this technology, which had only been introduced in 1956, had previously been used only for time-delayed broadcasts to the West Coast. In 1966, ‘Truth or Consequences’ became the first successful, non network, daily game show in first-run syndication having ended its NBC run one year earlier. This version continued through 1974. The show was done from Metromedia’s studios in Los Angeles. Three years later, in the fall of 1977, a syndicated revival titled ‘The New Truth or Consequences’ premiered. Because Bob Barker was unavailable, due to his work on the daytime and nighttime versions of ‘The Price is Right’, he was replaced by Bob Hilton but this version did not click in the ratings, and was cancelled after a single season.

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Inside The First RCA Experimental Color Cameras

This is Richard C. Webb, designer of the first simultaneous, all-electronic color camera with the Wardman Park dolly mounted camera (as seen in the photo below) with it’s chassis and viewfinder removed. At the front of the cameras is the early optical system of dichroic mirrors bouncing the incoming image to one of three Image Orthicon tubes. I think the lenses are all 35mm. The center lens feeds the green channel, the right lens feeds the red channel and the left lens feeds the blue channel. In the next generation of experimental color cameras, the “coffin cameras” (which we’ll cover tomorrow) have added a turret of lenses and moved the optics inside along with some of the outboard equipment seen in these photos. It’s a shame that none of these, or the coffin cameras are left.

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RCA’s First Experimental Color Television Cameras

Shown here are the first two RCA color cameras made. The photo was taken at NBC/RCA’s Wardman Park Studio in Washington DC around 1949. The camera on the left has the lens cowl removed and notice that the color splitting mirrors are mounted in front of the fixed lenses. Although the b/w RCA TK10 and TK30 had come to market in 1946 with turret lenses, this camera was not quite ready for that yet and, as with the old Iconoscope cameras, had to dolly in and out to get close ups or long shots.

In late 1950, these cameras were basically abandoned when RCA moved color testing to NBC Studio 3H in New York. The Washington color veterans were sent there, but these cameras went back to Princeton. The new experimental color cameras in 3H were the black “coffin cameras” which had the first hint of the now famous rounded viewfinder. Color tests began in 3H in early 1951 and stayed there till early ’53 when the Colonial Theater came into service with the prototype RCA TK40s. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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What A HOOT! You MUST See This!

Take 5 minutes to watch this ULTRA RARE clip. This is Merv Griffin’s first TV show ‘Play Your Hunch’, but the GUESTS…WOW! Three of the biggest song writers of the day (early ’60s) and you’ll be stunned at what their songs were, even then! You know them all well! ENJOY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceb4OY6_24c

JERRY LEIBER, BURT BACHARACH and NORMAN GIMBEL appear in this rare segment of PLAY YOUR HUNCH with MERV GRIFFIN.

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1964, Republican National Convention, San Francisco

Great shot of the Marconi Mark IV in it’s suspended bucket with a couple of RCA TK11/31s on in front of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. The ABC cameras have been brought in from KPTV in Portland, OR. Back then, ABC, CBS and NBC would bring in a total of 50 or more big cameras to cover these events, even though they would pool coverage of the convention itself. NBC had a few hand helds, but it would be ’68 before the portable/backpack cameras (mostly Norelco PCP70s) started showing up.

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‘The Red Skelton Show’: CBS Television City, Studio 33

This photo from dress rehearsal on January 15, 1957, the first show he had done in several weeks after learning that his 9 year old son, Richard, had leukemia. On December 1, I posted here about how CBS moved their color cameras around in Television City. This is another example of the how and when the TK41s from Studio 41 were brought to Studio 33 (using the Studio 41 control room). From 1955-1960, Skelton’s was the show most color cast on CBS with 100 episodes done in color. By 1960, CBS no longer manufactured television sets (unlike its rival NBC’s parent company, RCA) and pulled the plug on colorcasts. With the exception of a few specials, and the self produced shows Skelton did in color from his own facility in ’61 and ’62, CBS would not colorcast again on a regular basis until the 1965-66 fall season. I think the “woman/wife” here is Mickey Rooney in drag with Paul Wenchel and Jerry Mahoney as hosts of the a show then on CBS called ‘Do You Trust Your Wife’, which later became ‘Who Do You Trust’ when it, and a freshly fired CBS talent named Johnny Carson, moved to ABC in New York with Johnny as host.

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