An Interesting Story about TK41s and American Bandstand

I’ve often wondered if TK41s were ever used to shoot American Bandstand and I have found out that the answer is yes, but only for a couple of weeks, and it wasn’t in LA…it was at WFIL in Philadelphia.

ABC was really the last of the big 3 to go full color, to their credit though, they did broadcast the ‘Jetsons’ in color as early as ’62, but only by taking the film to KNBC to feed them the color signal as they did not have a color telecine chain till a couple of years later.

But back to Philadelphia. In 1958, WFIL went color and got a few TK41s. They decided to use them on American Bandstand because they could at least feed the color signal live there in Philly even if ABC network didn’t ‘do’ color. Studio B was 80 x 42 x 24, but with the bleachers and set, there was a lot less space to dance. For years, the show was shot with 3 RCA TK10s, and later TK11s, and that worked out fine, but the TK41s, were so big and took so much room to swing around (remember the camera from pan handle to lens tip is 5 feet long), shooting with even 2 took up so much of the dance floor that they went to a single TK41.

It didn’t take long for everyone to figure out that the new 1 camera color show was nowhere near as good as the old 3 camera black and white one, so they went back to the TK10s. To make the decision easier, ABC refused to take the color signal about the same time the local producers began to miss their choice of shots.

Source

Most Excellent!

Thanks to Thomas Buckley for this great photo. This is Roger Mudd filling in for Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News around 1966 or so. The Norelco PC60, camera 1 in the background is probably one Dave Dorsett used in his many years as ‘Walter’s cameraman’.

Source

Peter Jennings: Berlin Wall

While the great Peter Jennings is on my mind, here is a photo of him preparing to go live in the fall of 89 at the fall of the Berlin Wall. Other ABC people in the photo are Jack Smith to the left of Jennings and Steve Tello on the right. Stu Schutman and Annie Benjamin are shown here too.

Source

The Over – Under:

This is the latest from Chapman for football coverage. Here ESPN cameras are mounted on an Olympian sideline crane on a modified T formation with one above the other. Both platform turrets have 360 movement that the operator ‘walks’ to the angle they want with their feet, similar to the European soccer sideline rigs and hockey ‘half shell’ set ups. COOL!

Source

Dumont: WABD TV New York

This is a companion to the Electrocam photo posted yesterday. This control room shot is not from Dumont’s 67th Street Telecenter, but the photo owner, Ward Bennett thinks this is either at the Adelphi Theater, where the ‘Honemooners’ was shot, or at the Wannamaker’s studio.

Shown here, Frank Carr on left standing up talking on telephone, Hal Bowden sitting right of Frank, Paul Mirasola seated far right, and Ken Gieman, the person who was the Electonicam operator, is in the Audio Room.

The station traces its history to 1938, when television set and equipment manufacturer Allen B. DuMont founded W2XVT (renamed as W2XWV in 1944), an experimental station. On May 2, 1944, the station received its commercial license — the third in New York City — on channel 4 as WABD, after DuMont’s initials. It was one of the few stations that continued broadcasting during World War II, making it the fourth-oldest continuously broadcasting commercial station in the United States. The station broadcast from the DuMont Building on Madison Avenue. On December 17, 1945 WABD moved to channel 5.

Channel 5 is now WNYW and is the flagship station of Fox Broadcasting. It’s sister station is WWOR (Secaucus NJ). I noticed that Mr Harold (Hal) Borth has visited this site and I would like to hear from you Harold. Please email me at edition4@comcast.net.

Mr. Borth spent 40 years with these stations as a Senior Engineer and has been on top of the Empire State Building and World Trade Center more times than you can count attending to the transmitters and towers. I hope to do a story on WABD and it’s progression to WNYW.

Source

Real Camera Operator History! A TRUE RARITY! (Revised Text)

Here is a picture of Ken Gieman, the first Dumont Electorcam operator. I think Ken is on the left of the camera with his hand on the steering ring.

This picture was taken at Dumont Broadcasting, Channel 5, Studio 5, 205 East 67th Street, NYC about 1956. I had originally thought the set behind them was the ‘Honeymooners’ set without the furniture, but after seeing the comments below, have double checked the photo. This set has double wide windows…Ralph and Alice’s apartment window was a single window.

This is a 35 mm version of the Electrocam and used Kodak Tri X film.

This picture was sent to me by Ward Bennett who was given the photo by Harold Borth who Ward worked with at MetroMedia, WNEW-TV then at FOX, WNYW-TV. Thank you Ward!

Source

Marconi Mark VII Color

This is from a 1975 tennis match near Boston. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a Mark VII with a lens other than it’s regular Angenieux lens compliment. These were great cameras and I’m glad to have one on display. Mine spent most of it’s days on Sesame Street.

Source

Chicago TV Class Picture

With Chicago’s WBKB still on my mind from this morning’s post, I thought now was a good time to add this photo of the windy city’s bright start of the small screen from the early days. The names are at the bottom and should be viewable in ‘full screen’ mode.

Source

The EMMY Awards: Part 1

In the video below from the 1953 Emmy Awards show, we see the independent station, KHJ’s cameras bringing us great scenes of Vivian Vance (Ethel) and Lucille Ball (Lucy) accepting their awards on this local broadcast. Interestingly, all 3, including Desi Arnaz push for a ‘writer’ category that soon was added to the mix of awards.

The first six Emmys were awarded January 25, 1949, and the very first went to 20yearold Shirley Dinsdale, a Los Angeles ventriloquist, for being the Most Outstanding Television Personality.

The original Academy of Television Arts and Sciences was founded in 1946 by Syd Cassyd, a reporter for a TV trade magazine in Los Angeles and a grip on Paramounts back lot.

The Emmys originally were to be called Ikes, a short form for the television iconoscrope tube, but there was concern they would be linked to Dwight D. Eisenhower. So instead, Harry Lubcke of the Society of Television Engineers came up with a feminization of Immy, a term used for the early image orthicon camera tube but the name was feminized to Emmy to match the look of the trophy statue. Dorothy McManus was the model for her husband, Louis McManus, as he designed the winged golden girl holding up the universal symbol of the electron, which would become the Emmy Award statue. He received a plaque from the Academy at the first awards ceremony.

In 1951, Red Skelton accepted the Best Comedian award by saying, I think this should have gone to Lucille Ball. In 1950, when Groucho Marx accepted the honor of TVs Most Outstanding Personality, he picked up Miss Emmy, the former Miss America Rosemary LaPlanche, and carried her off the stage, leaving his statue behind.

6th Annual Emmys. Vivian Vance wins as well as best situation comedy for I Love Lucy.

Source

The EMMY Awards: Part 2

Here is a photo from the 1955 Emmy Awards. NBC originated this first ever coast to coast simulcast. Starting in 1955 to 1971, the Emmys were simulcast from both New York and Los Angeles to quell jealousies between rival cities, frequently resulting in screens going blank for up to a minute. It was a costly arrangement and NBC paid $110,000 for the first transcontinental hookup.

When the Emmys were first broadcast in 1949, there were 1 million TV sets in the United States. By the national broadcast of 1955, there were 25 million.

ATT was nominated for an engineering Emmy but lost in 1951 for the transcontinental microwave relay system that made possible live coast-to-coast television broadcasts.

The Emmys have been televised every year except 1954 when there were disputes between the east and west coast chapters, and were shown for the first time on a national broadcast in 1955 on NBC. The January 16, 1957, Emmy awards ceremony was the first to be telecast in color.

Ed Sullivan and New York’s TV elite forced the establishment of a separate bicoastal group, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in 1957.

In 1977, after suits and countersuits, the bicoastal academies finally agreed to work together. The NATAS, based in New York, manages daytime, sports, news and documentary, international and local awards. The newer Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, located in California, bestows primetime prizes.

The number of categories for Emmys has fluctuated wildly over the years, from six the first year to more than 40 in many seasons. Even the wording changes, fluctuating from best to outstanding. Once there was a separate category for Westerns, but those Gunsmoke and Maverick days are gone at least for now. Cable TV programming was not allowed to participate in the primetime competition until 1987.

Jackie Gleason never won an Emmy, but his pal Art Carney won five for The Honeymooners. Deadpanner Ed Sullivan, who caused the bicoastal split in the academy in June 1955, smiled when his show received the Best Variety Series award that year. He never won a personal Emmy in voter competition, but was given a Trustees Award in 1971.

Rod Serling won his third successive writing award in 1957 for The Comedian, about the struggles of a burlesque king adjusting to TV. The award for the story, obviously based on Milton Berles life, was presented by Berle.

The Emmys ceremony for the 1958-59 season is remembered for the notorious Astaire Affair, when the dancers first television special, An Evening with Fred Astaire, won all nine of the awards for which it was nominated, thus establishing an Emmy record. Ed Sullivan asked that the ballots be impounded.

Huckleberry Hound was the first syndicated program and the first cartoon series to take home an Emmy, which it did in the 1959-60 season.

Hallmark Hall of Fame’s Macbeth, a $750,000 production filmed on location in Scotland and broadcast as a two hour color presentation, is considered by many television historians to be the first made for TV movie. It received five Emmys at the 1961 ceremony, including one in the rare category, Program of the Year.

Source

Did you know CBS made tubes?

I didn’t either till I saw this old ad with Gary Moore. The tube business was probably a part of the TV set maker, Hytron that CBS bought in 1951 to make ‘Air King’ home receiver sets compatible with it’s Field Sequential color system. Interestingly most of those home sets that were sold were bought back and destroyed after the FCC went with RCA’s Dot Sequential color system.

Source

Finally!

I’ve wondered for years what this pedestal is and now I know…it’s a Canon MC 300 and it was made in Japan. I never knew Canon made television equipment other than lenses. I think it is like the Vinten Fulmar in that it has 2 telescoping columns under the brake ring. A lot of these were in use in Japan, Asia and Australia.

Source

A First!

Here is a photo of Bing Crosby’s first appearance on television.

With a shortfall of funds facing the U.S. Olympic team, Hollywood luminaries gathered on the stage of the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles and pleaded, cajoled and implored the television audience watching on both NBC and CBS to phone in their pledges.

The 14 hour telethon was hosted by Bob Hope and his frequent co-star in the Paramount Pictures string of “Road” movies, Bing Crosby, who until then had shied away from television.

A week before the telethon, Hope marked Crosby’s impending television debut by showing a large cutout of his friend on “The Colgate Comedy Hour.” Crosby, a CBS man, and Hope, always on NBC, joined forces at the behest of Vincent X. Flaherty, a legendary sports columnist for the now-defunct Los Angeles Examiner and a drinking and golfing buddy of both men.

Perhaps the biggest coup of the telethon was in getting Crosby to appear on television. Crosby already has turned down several well-paying opportunities to appear on television.

“This is one time I couldn’t refuse,” Crosby said. “I think every American should get behind our Olympic team and send our athletes across at full strength; and in the finest style possible. We’ve got to show those Reds up.”

The 1952 Olympics were the first ones that pitted Americans against Soviets, and the Communists were heading to the Games predicting victory.

Source

TV History: October 5, 1947

Below, a single RCA TK30 pool camera is shown bringing President Harry Truman to the nation in the first ever television broadcast live from the White House. The first President to appear on TV was Franklin Roosevelt who spoke at the opening session of the New York World’s Fair on April 30, 1939.

Source

Ever seen my camera collection?

In case you have never have, I’m re posting this story from Atlanta’s NBC affiliate, WXIA. It’s from a couple of years back, and there are more cameras now but this is still fun. Enjoy!

Vintage TV Camera collector, Bobby Ellerbee is featured on an Atlanta news station. The news piece covers Mr. Ellerbee’s extensive collection of television c…

Source

MLB Productions Tour

Here’s an inside look at Major League Baseball Network’s new production center.

In this episode of MediabistroTV’s “Cubes,” we tour the headquarters of MLB Network. The impressive space, which is also home to MLB Productions, features mu…

Source