A Rare Color Photo of CBS Television City Studio 33

Perhaps the most famous of the TVC studios is 33. This is the only one left that has the side wings and the built in theater seating. Here is a shot from behind the lighting directors console from around 1953.

As mentioned in the post just before this, the dynamics of production changed as with this much space, you could have horizontal production with the cameras and crew moving from side to side on stage instead of operating in a maze of set walls as was necessary in most NYC productions. I think this set is either ‘My Friend Irma’ or ‘My Favorite Husband’.

You can’t see the wings, but you can see how far the center ramp comes out into the audience. Studio 31 was originally a mirror image of 33…the only difference was that in 31, the lighting board was on the other side of the control room which we see the corner of at the far right in this photo. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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The RCA Kinescope Machine

September 13, 1947 — Kodak and NBC develop ‘kinescopes’, which use special film cameras to shoot directly off a TV screen. This permits the recording and later distribution of live shows for sale, or archiving.

The Kinescope dominated TV recording for time delay in the early 1950’s. A Kinescope recorder was basically a special 16mm or 35mm film camera mounted in a large box aimed at a high quality monochrome video monitor. All things considered the Kinescope made high quality and respectable TV recordings.

The Kinescope was quite the clever device. It’s film camera ran at a speed of 24 fps. Because the TV image repeated at 60 fields interlaced (30 fps) the film had to move intermittantly between video frames and then be rock steady during exposure. The pull-down period for the film frame was during the vertical interval of less than 2ms, which was something no mechanical contraption could do at the time. Several manufacturers like RCA, Acme, General Precision, and Eastman Kodak found various ways around the problem by creating a novel shutter system that used an extra six frames of the 30 frame video signal to move the film. This action integrated the video half-images into what seemed like smooth 24fps film pictures. Of course, the kines were played back on air using film chains running at 24fps so the conversion to film was complete and seamless. Until videotape recorders made their debut, the Kinescope was the only way to transmit delayed television programs that were produced live.

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Always Handy

Flip cards and camera alignment chats were always close at hand in the early days like in this 1949 shot from NBC. Do you know why?

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May 1951: Ed Sullivan’s ‘Toast Of The Town’

When the show debuted in 1948, six of June Taylor’s dancers were chosen to dance at the top of the show. They were called ‘The Toastettes’ and were on almost every show open, till it became ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ in 1955.

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1951: Colgate Comedy Hour

Great shot! Notice turntable in the stage and how big the set is. In the early days, before the studios were consolidated, all the networks had theaters they shot in all over NYC and LA. This was in The Center Theater, across from NBC. Finally, a cameraman gets to actually sit on the swing out seat on the Panoram dolly. Usually, they had to climb all over it to see into the viewfinder and get their shots.

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RCA Orthicon Camera, WTOP Washington

A couple of days ago, Val Ginter in NYC asked about the Orthicon cameras. I suspect they came out around 1942-43 and there were not very many as RCA knew the Image Orthicon development was coming along nicely, and would replace these once the war ended. Notice the ‘elaborate’ camera art covering the RCA branding.

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How Hot Is It? Pretty Hot!

It’s not often that you see a TK11 opened up like this, but this one on the set of Art Linkletter’s House Party at Television City needs to breathe. Unlike cameras at the local stations, network cameras work for hours on end in rehearsals and in production and the heat from the tubes caused setting to drift and viewfinders to go blank.

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Soupy Sales: 1964 WNEW

Even though WNEW was the old Dumont owned WABD, it’s still odd to see these old Dumont cameras in use on the ‘new’ Soupy show. The show started in Detroit at WXYZ in ’53 and began to air on ABC in 59. In ’60 Sales moved to KABC and after ABC canceled the show in ’63, he moved to WNEW where he did the show till ’66 and those 260 shows are the ones in syndication.

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“Ovary Soap”

Believe it or not, that’s the line that helped Mel Allan become the Voice Of The Yankees. Mel’s big break came in 1939 when Garnett Marks, Arch McDonald’s partner on Yankee broadcasts, twice referred to Ivory soap, the Yankees’ sponsor at the time, as “Ovary Soap.” He was fired, and Allen was tapped to replace him. McDonald himself went back to Washington after only one season, and Allen became the Yankees’ and Giants’ lead announcer. Allen was able to do double duty for both teams because only the home games were being broadcast.

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AT LAST! The Lone Ranger, Unmasked…

If you were like me, you always wondered what Clayton Moore looked like without the famous Lone Ranger mask. Now we know.

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Braves Baseball On TBS…

Gone but not forgotten. In 2007, after a 32 year run on Superstation WTBS, the Atlanta Braves lost their national cable audience leaving WGN as the only super station to televise their home teams to a national audience on a regular basis. For more, and a memorable list of Braves announcers including Pete Van Wieren, Skip Carry and Ernie Johnson, click the link.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braves_TBS_Baseball

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WGN: Chicago

In 1960, between the Cubs and White Sox, WGN televised 120 baseball games with 8 RCA TK41s. For attendance reasons, I’m sure both teams tried not to be home at the same time, but when it happened, 4 cameras went to Cominskey Park and 4 went to Wrigley Field.

WGN Television, whose call letters are derived from the Chicago Tribune’s first slogan, “World’s Greatest Newspaper”, hit the airwaves on April 5, 1948 on Channel 9 in Chicago from its studios at Tribune Tower. Colonel Robert McCormick led the Tribune Company into the TV era, believing that “in television, we have embarked upon another of America’s adventures.”

In addition to carrying Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball games in the 1950s, WGN-TV made its first attempts at producing entertainment series to air on the station while also distributing them to TV stations across the country. Although initially an affiliate of the DuMont and CBS television networks, WGN-TV realized it could better serve the Chicago area audience as an independent station. By 1957, WGN became one of the first local television stations to offer a full schedule of live programs in color. One year later, the station had scored many firsts, including the first televised appearance of President Truman in Chicago as well as mobile coverage of General MacArthur’s visit to the city.

In 1961, WGN-TV began broadcasting from new facilities at 2501 West Bradley Place on Chicago’s northwest side and premiered its own version of “Bozo’s Circus”, which became the most popular and successful locally produced children’s series in the history of television. Also in the 1960s, WGN expanded its “10th Hour News” newscast to a half-hour (the first Chicago TV station to do so), produced programs such as “Garfield Goose and Friends” and “Ray Rayner and His Friends,” sports telecasts that included Chicago Blackhawks hockey and Chicago Bulls basketball, and developed a vast movie library that was featured on a number of showcases such as “Family Classics.” In 1966, the Chicago Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Board of Directors awarded Ward Quaal, then President of WGN Continental Broadcasting Company, the Governors’ Award “for developing the finest independent TV station in the U.S.”

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