NBC’s “Star Time Magazine”…1963-64 Guide To The New Season

This is full of great memories, but make sure you take a look at the last pages, where you’ll see NBC’s new ‘Color Girl’ and a few of the first ever TK40 prototypes at The Colonial Theater.

In 1951, Marie McNamara became the first ‘Color Girl’ and when she left in ’63, Marilyn Gray took over. Thanks to Barry Mitchell for the link. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 11, 1967…ABC Debuts First Color Portable Camera

Below is a clip from November 11, 1967 showing the camera in use by ABC at the UCLA – USC game in Los Angeles.

ABC and Ampex worked together to come up with three configurations of the color portable unit. Shown here is the original cabled version, with a mini camera control unit in the back pack. Later, the back pack could be loaded with either an Ampex VR 3000 videotape recorder, or a microwave transmitter for live, uncabled work.

The Ampex, two Plumbicon, BC-100 camera head had an optical splitting system, providing one tube for the luminance channel and the other with an alternate red-blue image produced by a synchronously rotating filter wheel. Basically, this is a modified version of the Field Sequential color system.

The combination of luminance and green, with field sequential red and blue, is sent back to base via a compact microwave link mounted on the backpack. The base station uses a field-storage delay device to reinsert the alternately missed red and blue signals, providing Red, Green and Blue for matrixing and encoding into standard NTSC format. A nickel-cadmium battery keept the system operating for over an hour, with battery changes possible in a few minutes. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 11, 1951…First Video Image From Magnetic Tape

Believe it or not, Bing Crosby Enterprises engineers Jack Mullen and Wayne Johnson were the first to produce an image from video tape.

What follows is a first hand account from BCE engineer Robert R. Phillips. Below that is a link to a much larger article on Crosby’s work in tape of all kinds. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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While there were many interesting experiences working at Bing Crosby Enterprises, none was as challenging as the development of a video recorder for Bing. When Jack told Bing in 1950 that it could be done, Bing responded by setting up the video recorder project to be led by Jack in the Electronic Division.

Mullin reached out and recruited Wayne Johnson to assist him, and by November 11, 1951 they demonstrated the first video picture from magnetic tape. It was a video of an airplane taking off. The image was very snowy and the airplane was a dark blob, but with the commentary by Frank Healey everyone managed to see the takeoff. Frank was an ex-movie producer.

I started with BCE about a week later later and found myself involved in the construction of what I call the Mark II version. The Mark I system used the top plate from one of the portable Ampex 200 audio tape recorders modified to operate at 360 ips (20 MPH) with a modified head that gave it a bandwidth of about 1 MHz. The tape was quarter-inch, and the reels did not have any sides to reduce once-a-round effects. This lack of sides produced large piles of tape if something went wrong. At times I had to go out the front door and down Sunset Blvd. with the tape to get it back on the reel. The drive was an early version of the tight loop.

The Mark II version used the same top plate as that of the Mark I, but it was modified for one inch tape. It still operated at 360 ips with the early version of the tight loop drive. Jack Mullin and Wayne Johnson had decided to build the Mark II system before the November 11 demonstration and were actively engaged in its construction. When I started at BCE they were testing various head stacks and working with William Wetzel at 3M to improve the tape quality for the recorder. It was obvious that main problem was how to increase the recorded bandwidth on the tape. We would find out over the next months that there was a lot that was not known about how the head-tape process works.

A discussion over using a rotary head approach to that of longitudinal had taken place, and there was much doubt that the rotary head would work. It also would have been difficult for the BCE group to implement it because of our lack of the mechanical facilities to build one. The longitudinal approach was selected with multiple tracks. Instead of using a rotary head, the multiple tracks were electronically scanned. The Mark II system had 12 tracks recorded on the 1 inch tape. Ten of the tracks were used for the video, and the other two, one on the top of the tape and one on the bottom, were used for audio, sync and reference signals.

The video signal in the record subsystem was sampled with the rate tied to the video sync signal. These samples or pulses were sequentially recorded across the 10 video tracks. For each set of 10 samples the polarity of the recorded pulse was reversed. This was done to prevent a bias on the tape. The result was a series of pulses recorded on each track on the tape alternating in polarity. The amplitude of the recorded pulse was equal to the amplitude of the video sample, and each channel had a 1 MHz bandwidth.

The playback system had to reverse the polarity of every other pulse and assemble them into a video stream of pulses combined with the video sync signal. The reference signals from the top and bottom tape channels were used to correct for tape speed and skew. This information was used to adjust the sampled video pulses from the tape. The video picture on the monitor consisted of a number analog “pixels” that had to be processed to eliminate the dot structure by averaging between them.

About a month after I started, Dean DeMoss and Chester Shaw were hired to help build and test the new electronics for the Mark II system. Gene Brown provided the mechanical support, and the system was built and operational by early 1952. Wayne Johnson and I were working on the system Friday night, 14 March 1952, and had completed the last adjustment to it. It was ready for its first recording test, and we decided to try it before we went home.

A video program was recorded and played back; it could have been classified as a fair picture. However, it did have the “pixels” since the additional processing had not been added. We jumped up and down and cheered. It turns out that we were the only two to see the picture because Wayne came in the next day and dismantled the recorder to “improve” it. Jack Mullin found out on Monday and was not happy that he missed the first successful test recording session.

During the 1952 and 1953 period the major effort was concentrated on improving the frequency response and reducing the tape speed. Many heads designs were tested using different types of magnetic materials, gap sizes and materials, and head windings. To make the heads, a precision optical lapping capability was installed along with a way of winding the coils on the assembled head segments. After trying many different head configurations, it was realized that there was a limitation in recording high frequencies on magnetic tape. A point was reached where changes in the head configuration and the tape speed made little difference in the upper frequency that could be recorded.

There were a number of other groups that were working on the video recorder. One of these was RCA, and its chairman General David Sarnoff wanted one for his birthday. By 1953 they had demonstrated a system that ran at 360 inches per second like the first BCE machine in 1951. It had better quality using video compression, but only lasted 4 minutes per reel.

The same year Sarnoff of RCA and his board of directors visited BCE to see if they could buy our recorder. The party arrived in a number of black limousines. Sarnoff was in the first dressed in gray and the board in the rest, dressed in black. As Sarnoff marched up the driveway the board fell in two-by-two behind him. They went into our small laboratory for the demonstration. Sarnoff sat in the middle and the board on either side of him.

After the demonstration they went upstairs to the conference room. Sarnoff told Frank Healey that he wanted to buy the recorder, and Frank told him it was not for sale. Sarnoff told Frank that he would just buy them out; to which Frank replied “You do not have enough money!” The RCA group left.

During this period the tight loop drive was perfected, and the correction of wow and flutter effects addressed. Much of this work also was used to improve the recording of the instrumentation telemetry. In the summer of 1953, I met Eugene Sakasegawa who was chief engineer of the USC television station. We were still looking for people who were good engineers with video experience, and I encouraged him to join us. He was hired, and his first assignment was to learn how to make magnetic heads. Gene was a craftsman and took up the challenge. After a couple of months of building new types of heads and not making any progress, Gene produced a head that broke the 1 MHz frequency barrier. Jack and Wayne could not believe it.

When asked what he did to make the head, he said that he made some small cuts inside the head to make it look better. He had been lapping the head halves to create a uniform gap and also the head face. These actions did make a small difference in the performance, but the “beauty treatment” was the key. The head laminations at the head gap were different widths and caused a non-uniform magnetic pattern across the tape (top to bottom). Gene had made a very accurate cut behind the head gap across the laminations. This cut made them the same thickness and caused the magnetic pattern across the tape to be uniform.

A number of different cuts were tested until proper configuration was found. The result of the head “beauty treatment” was to reduced the tape speed of the Mark II to 120 ips and produce a new design for the recording the video information. The new “Mark III” recorder operated at 100 ips with half-inch tape using longitudinal recording and no scanning. It recorded color video and sound with three heads – video, color, and sound/reference. The recorder also employed video compression techniques, and an early version was demonstrated in February 1955.

The recorder was further refined and demonstrated in June 1955. Based on the performance of this new recorder CBS ordered three of them, and the summer of that year we worked building them. In late 1955 Bing asked Jack Mullin to visit Ampex to see their video tape recorder. We knew that they were working on one, but did not know how far they had come.

Jack went to Ampex near the end of the year and came back with the news that it was over, Ampex had a better recorder. Bing sent another $50,000 check to Ampex for the first of their video recorders. It was delivered to his TV station in Washington State. Ampex demonstrated their rotary head machine on 14 April 1956; CBS cancelled their order with BCE and bought the Ampex recorder. The Mark III recorders were then converted to wide band instrumentation recorders and sold.

For MUCH MORE, follow this link.

http://ethw.org/First-Hand:Bing_Crosby_and_the_Recording_Revolution

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November 10, 1969…”Sesame Street” Debuts On PBS

Here is the full debut episode of the show.

Since almost everyone in the world knows the show, since it’s now on in 123 countries, we’ll celebrate the anniversary with a look at the early production history.

In the photos below, we see the original home of the show which was done from the old RKO 81st Street Theater at 2248 Broadway. The theater was owned by Teletape Productions, but before this, it had been the home of the first and only CBS color studio on the east coast…Studio 72 which was created in the fall of 1954.

Also shown here is an early cast and crew photo with the Marconi Mark VII color cameras. The color photo of a Mark VII shooting Grover is the one that I now have in my collection…it was Camera 2 and in the closeup, you can see that the dome tally light number is the same. There were six Mark VIIs in use on the show.

Teletape was a video production company that merged with Reeves Sound Services in 1974 and became Reeves Teletape. Before that, Reeves had been more of a sound and video post edit company.

According to our friend Dennis Degan, who worked at Reeves Teletape, R/T moved ‘Sesame Street’ production in 1983 from 81st Street to the 55th Street studio, which was formerly WNET-TV’s studio on 9th Ave at 55th Street. They made this move because R/T sold the 81st Street studio. They originally bought it from CBS in 1967.

Sesame Street was produced at 55th Street from 1983 to around 1990, first with R/T, then in 1987 with Unitel Video, as R/T went out of business. Sesame moved to Kaufman-Astoria Studios in 1990 where it has remains to this day. The RKO 81 studio was torn down in 1986. This little history lesson was brought to you by the letter B for Bobby. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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Election Day In Television Land…Special Coverage Sets

In these photos from friends prepping now in New York, here is a look at some of the sets that will be used today, starting with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” set being built in Studio 8H for a special live audience show tomorrow. There is more on each photo, so click through. AND, in the comments section below, there is a video from Ethan Harp at The Javits Center showing the layout of the facility and stage for the Hillary Clinton event tonight. Thanks to all our friends for the pix, and for all your long hours today! Oh, and please share your electoion day pix below! -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 7, 1948…”Studio One” Debuts On CBS

The first episode, brought with it another first…one of TV’s first live special effects shots. In the photo, we see star, Margaret Sullivan, “driving in the rain” on the first telecast. That first presentation was titled “The Storm” and originated from Studios 41 and 42 at Grand Central. It was produced by Worthington Minor, and directed by Yul Brynner. In the other photo, we see Sullivan with co-star Dean Jagger on the set.

“Studio One” was one of the most significant U.S. anthology drama series during the 1950s. Like other anthology series of the time… “Robert Montgomery Presents”, “Goodyear Television Playhouse”, “Philco Theater”, “Kraft Television Theater”, and others, the format was organised around the weekly presentation of a one hour, live, television play. Several hours of live drama were provided by the networks per week, each play different: such risk and diversity is hard to come by today.

Offering a wide range of dramas, “Studio One” received Emmy nominations every year from 1950 to 1958, and staged many notable and memorable teleplays among its 467 episodes from 1948 till 1958.

Some created such an impact they were adapted into theatrical films. William Templeton’s 1953 adaptation of George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, starring Eddie Albert as Winston Smith, led to the 1956 feature film version with Edmond O’Brien in the principal role.

Reginald Rose’s drama “Twelve Angry Men”, about the conflicts of jurors deciding a murder case, originated on Studio One on September 20,1954 and the 1957 motion picture remake with Henry Fonda was nominated for three Academy Awards. -Bobby Ellerbee

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November 6, 1947…’Meet The Press’ Debuts, NBC

This is America’s longest running television program. Almost everyone thinks of it as a Sunday morning show, but when it started, it was a Saturday night show, and hosted by a woman.

Her name was Martha Rountree and she started as a reporter at The Tampa Tribune, but she wasn’t reporting on social occasions or homemaking. As a kind of rebel from the start, her duties included writing a sports column under the name “M. J. Rountree,” with Tribune readers none the wiser as to the sex of the journalist who was, after all, writing in a field dominated by men.

A local CBS station was impressed enough by her work that they gave her a chance to write for radio, at which she excelled. From there, she headed north to New York, where she wrote ad copy, but Rountree was not comfortable playing so minor a part of an industry she felt held greater opportunities for her.

“I got the ideas, worked them out; other people got the credit,” she lamented. “I wanted to produce myself. To prove that she meant business, she and her sister Ann, opened a production firm called Radio House, which prepared transcribed programs and singing commercials.

1945 was Rountree’s banner year. She made her mark on radio in a big way, selling the idea for two different panel shows to the Mutual Radio Network, premiering them a day apart in October. One was ‘Leave It to the Girls’, the other was ‘Meet The Press’ which debuted first on October 5, 1945.

Although frequently credited as a co-creation of Rountree and Lawrence E. Spivak, publisher and editor of American Mercury magazine, authoritative sources adamantly state that it was Rountree who developed the premise on her own, with Spivak joining up as co producer and business partner in the enterprise after the show had already debuted.

Our friend Max Schindler, who directed the show for over 20 years, had this to say about the creator credit, “Whoever conceived it, it was Spivak who made it a success…he dedicated his life to it”.

Here is more from Max, on directing the show. https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/shows/meet-the-press?clip=15097#highlights

On November 6, 1947, while still on Mutual Radio, the show came to NBC Television. ‘Meet the Press’ was originally presented on Saturday night at 7:30 as a half hour show with a single guest and a panel of questioners. The first guest was James Farley, who served as Postmaster General, Democratic National Committee chairman and campaign manager to Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the first two terms of the New Deal Administration.

The first host was its creator, Martha Rountree, the program’s only full time female moderator to date. She stepped down on November 1, 1953 and until Ned Brooks could take over, her friend Deena Clark filled in.

Rountree was succeeded by Ned Brooks, who remained as moderator until his retirement on December 26, 1965. Although Spivak became the moderator on January 1, 1966, he did not really want the job. Max Schindler said, “Spivak didn’t want to moderate…he wanted Edwin Neuman, but NBC could not spare him, so he reluctantly took over”. He retired on November 9, 1975, on a special one-hour edition that featured, for the first time, a sitting president, Gerald Ford, as the guest.

The next week, Bill Monroe, previously a weekly panelist like Spivak took over as moderator and stayed until June 2, 1984. For the next seven and a half years, the program then went through a series of hosts as it struggled in the ratings against ABC’s ‘This Week with David Brinkley’. Roger Mudd and Marvin Kalb (as co-moderators) followed Monroe for a year, followed by Chris Wallace from 1987 to 1988. Garrick Utley hosted ‘Meet the Press’ from 1989 through December 1, 1991 at which time Tim Russert took over, and not long after that, the show went to a one hour format.

Russert’s untimely death gave David Gregory the seat, and now Chuck Todd is host.

Rountree died on August 23, 1999, in Washington, where she had made her name as one of the key figures in political reporting. Tim Russert, summed up her status in the medium by declaring, “She was a news pioneer who helped create a national treasure, Meet the Press.” Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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Happy Trails! Colbert’s Gentle Sendoff To John Meiklejohn…

One of the best cameramen in the business retired last night, and Stephen gave his 11 year friend this send off. I’ve heard that as far back as 1966, they were telling JMJ stories.

This reminds me of the send off David Letterman gave to our friend, and CBS legend Dave Dorsett. Like Dave, I suspect John may be back from time to time to “fill in”. Happy Trails! -Bobby Ellerbee

https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/793310612386254849

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Today, he would have been 100 years old.

“Whatever the cost of education, the price is cheap compared with an ignorant nation”. -Walter Cronkite

This is Mr. Cronkite in Studio 42 at the CBS Grand Central studios.

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November 2, 1959…The Game Show Scandal Breaks Wide Open

It was on this day in 1959 that Charles Van Doren admitted before a congressional committee that he had indeed received the answers to the questions on “Twenty One”.

Here is Herb Stempel discussing loosing to Charles Van Doren by missing the “Marty’ Question. For all of us that have seen the movie “Quiz Show”, you must admit that the movie was very accurate in it’s portrayal of this whole story.

One of the key players in the “Twenty One” story, was producer Dan Enright. At this link is a very interesting and detailed article on Enright’s part, his rise and fall, and his eventual return to television with the shows “Jokers Wild” and “Tic, Tac, Dough”.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/quizshow/peopleevents/pande04.html

Actually, “Dotto” with host Jack Narz was the first show to be found rigged, and went off the air in August 1958. Narz was cleared of any wrong doing, but game shows were not, and over a three month period, all were canceled on every network, including “Twenty One”, which last aired October 16, 1958. -Bobby Ellerbee

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