Day One Of ‘Today’

Below is a photo taken on January 14, 1952…the day ‘Today’ debuted. In pre-production panning, the show went by the title of ‘The Rise And Shine Revue’. Dave Garroway (shown here) was the original host and was joined by news editor Jim Fleming and announcer Jack Lescoulie when the show debuted. Legendary and pioneering NBC president, Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, chose Garroway as the host of his new morning news-and-entertainment experiment in 1951.

Garroway began his broadcasting career modestly. Starting at NBC as a page in 1938, he graduated 23rd in a class of 24 from NBC’s school for announcers. Following graduation, he landed a job at Pittsburgh radio station KDKA in 1939. After two years with KDKA, Garroway left for Chicago. Garroway was introduced to the national television audience when he hosted the experimental musical variety show ‘Garroway at Large’, telecast live from Chicago. It was carried by NBC from June 18, 1949, to June 24, 1951.

At the same time he did ‘Today’, Garroway also hosted a Friday night variety series on NBC, ‘The Dave Garroway Show’, from October 2, 1953, to June 25, 1954. On October 16, 1955, he began hosting NBC’s live Sunday afternoon documentary ‘Wide Wide World’, continuing with that series until June 8, 1958. Another Friday evening variety show, Dave’s Place, was on the air in 1960. He also hosted a WNBC radio show, Dial Dave Garroway, that went on the air as soon as Today wrapped up each morning. Dial Dave Garroway began in 1946 when Garroway was still working for WMAQ in Chicago.

When Today started, it was seen live only in the Eastern and Central time zones, broadcasting three hours per morning but seen for only two hours in each time zone. Since 1958, Today is tape-delayed for the different time zones. Partly to accommodate host Dave Garroway’s declining health, the program ceased live broadcasts in the summer of 1958, opting instead to broadcast an edition taped the prior afternoon. The experiment, which drew criticism from many sides, ended when John Chancellor replaced Garroway in July 1961.

For many years Today was a two-hour program, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. in all time zones except for Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. Virgin Islands, until NBC expanded it to three hours on October 2, 2000. A fourth hour was added on September 10, 2007.

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‘Mike And Buff’

In response to yesterday’s post on the CBS color broadcasts, Mark VonderEmbse noticed one of the shows broadcast was the ‘Mike And Buff’ show with Mike Wallace and then wife, Buff Cobb. Here is a 1951 publicity photo of them Mark sent. Thanks!

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EMI, The Start Of Something Big…

Below is an EMI 203 Image Orthicon camera from 1960, but broadcast was just one area EMI was involved in. Here’s a short course on their history. Electric and Musical Industries Ltd was formed in March 1931 by the merger of the Columbia Graphophone Company and the Gramophone Company, with its “His Master’s Voice” record label, firms that have a history extending back to the origins of recorded sound. The new company produced sound recordings as well as recording and playback equipment.

The company’s gramophone manufacturing led to forty years of success with larger-scale electronics and electrical engineering. During and after the Second World War, the EMI Laboratories in Hayes, Hillingdon developed radar equipment and guided missiles, employing analogue computers. The company later became involved in broadcasting equipment, notably providing the first television transmitter to the BBC. It also manufactured broadcast television cameras for British television production companies, and for the BBC. The commercial television ITV companies used them as well alongside cameras made by Pye and Marconi. Their best remembered piece of broadcast television equipment was the EMI 2001 colour television camera, which became the mainstay of much of the British television industry from the end of the 1960s until the early 1980s. Exports of this piece of equipment were low, however, and EMI left this area of product manufacture.

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Dinah Shore…Her Early TV Career

Soon after she arrived in New York in 1937, Shore made her first television appearances on experimental broadcasts for NBC. Twelve years later, in 1949, she made her official television show debut on the Ed Wynn Show and in 1950 made a guest appearance on Bob Hope’s first television show. After being on other television shows, she got her own program, The Dinah Shore Show on NBC in 1951.She did two 15-minute shows a week for NBC til 1955.

In 1956, Shore began hosting a monthly series of one-hour full-color spectaculars as part of NBC’s The Chevy Show series. These proved so popular that the show was renamed The Dinah Shore Chevy Show the following season, with Shore becoming the full-time host of the show that aired three out of four weeks in the month. Broadcast live and in NBC’s famous “Living Color,” this variety show was one of the most popular of the 1950s and early 1960s and featured the television debuts of stars of the era, such as Yves Montand and Maureen O’Hara, and featured Dinah in performances alongside Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Pearl Bailey. She also appeared as a guest on another Chevrolet-sponsored variety show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC.

The Dinah Shore Chevy Show ran through the 1961-1962 season, after which Chevrolet dropped sponsorship, and Shore hosted a series of monthly broadcasts sponsored by The American Dairy Association and Green Stamps. Simply called “The Dinah Shore Show”, Dinah’s guests included Nat “King” Cole, Bing Crosby, Jack Lemmon, and a young Barbra Streisand. Over twelve seasons, from 1951 to 1963, Shore made 125 hour-long programs and 444 fifteen-minute shows. She always ended her televised programs by throwing an enthusiastic kiss directly to the cameras (and viewers) and exclaiming “MWAH!” to the audience.

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From KECA To KABC…

Before we get to the history, notice the dual floodlights on the front of this RCA TK10. Channel 7 first signed on the air under the callsign KECA-TV on September 16, 1949. It was the last television station licensed to Los Angeles operating on the VHF band to sign on, and the last of ABC’s five original owned-and-operated stations to make their debut (after San Francisco’s KGO-TV, which signed on four months earlier).

The station’s callsign was named after Los Angeles broadcasting pioneer Earle C. Anthony, whose initials were also present on channel 7’s then-sister radio station, KECA (790 AM), which had served as the Los Angeles affiliate of the NBC Blue Network. Anthony’s other Los Angeles radio station, KFI, was aligned with the Red Network. The Red Network survived the split of the two NBC radio networks ordered by the Federal Communications Commission in 1943. Edward J. Noble, who bought the Blue Network (beginning its transformation into ABC), purchased KECA radio a year later when the FCC forced Anthony to divest one of his Los Angeles radio stations. On February 1, 1954, KECA-TV changed its callsign to the present-day KABC-TV.

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On Location…

Taking a breather between scenes, Batman and Robin plan their moves in the Batmobile before the director calls “Action”. It aired on ABC for three seasons from January 12, 1966 to March 14, 1968. The show was aired twice weekly for its first two seasons, resulting in the production of a total of 120 episodes.

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Takes A Lickin’ And Keeps On Tickin’

This is the Vinten ‘Heron’ studio crane and a Marconi Mark VIII plumbicon camera at the CBC studios in Montreal in the early to mid 70s. After a long stay in storage, it was returned to service last year.

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The Great Carsoni, Up In Smoke

Johnny gets tangled in a joke, but the boom operator’s attempt to help only digs the hole deeper. At the end, Johnny goes up on the boom for a “chat”.

Johnny tries to get through a joke with a little help from his staff. Visit http://www.facebook.com/OfficialJohnnyCarson to like “The Tonight Show Starring J…

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‘Kiss Me Kate’, NBC November 20, 1958

This production of the Cole Porter musical was done for The Hallmark Hall Of Fame. The cardboard viewfinder shades on the TK41s tell us this was done at NBC Brooklyn Studios.

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Be Here Tomorrow! I Just Got Back…

I’m very tired, but wanted you to know I’ll have some great pictures in the morning of ‘The Killing Of Kennedy’ docudrama that I, and these 3 cameras were a part of this morning at New Millennium Studios in Richmond VA.

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The Heart Of CBS News

Left to right, Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite and Edward R Murrow. CBS began broadcasting news shows on Saturday nights, expanding to two nights a week in 1947. On May 3, 1948, Douglas Edwards began anchoring CBS Television News, a regular 15-minute nightly newscast. It aired every weeknight at 7:30 PM, and was the first regularly scheduled, network television news program to use an anchor. The week’s news stories were recapped Sunday night with Newsweek in Review. The name was later shortened to Week in Review and the show was moved to Saturday. In 1950, the name of the nightly news was changed to Douglas Edwards with the News, and the following year, it became the first news program to be broadcast on both coasts, thanks to a new coaxial cable connection, prompting Edwards to use the greeting “Good evening everyone, coast to coast. Walter Cronkite became anchor on April 16, 1962. On September 2, 1963, CBS Evening News became network television’s first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, lengthened from its original 15 minutes, and telecast at 6:30 PM. The Huntley-Brinkley Report expanded to 30 minutes on September 9, 1963, exactly a week after CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite did so. Murrow gained fame on CBS radio with his reporting from London during World War II. After the war, he became the president of CBS News but later gave up that post to return to reporting on radio and television.

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First Ever Image Orthicon Broadcast: June 19, 1946

In this photo, you see one of four RCA TK30s at the Joe Lewis – Billy Conn rematch. The fight, at Yankee Stadium, was the first televised World Heavyweight Championship bout ever, and 146,000 people watched it on TV, also setting a record for the most seen world heavyweight bout in history. The Image Orthicon tube required only a tenth of the light that Iconoscope and Orthicon tubes required. The TK30s and TK10s were also the first cameras to have lens turrets.

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The Ikegami HK312 E

Here’s Ted Koppel with the triax version of the HK312 at ABC’s Washington news studio around 1986. I think the HK312 D model was a triax camera as well and may have still had the dark brown viewfinder like the A model. The big bulge on the side is the triax box.

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