The female in these Match Game clips is our friend Christina Skaggs. She lives in Hawaii now and is a fantastic artist, working in several mediums.

Here are 4 videos that show the Norelco PC 70s at Television City at work on The Match Game. Gene liked to mess with them as you’ll see here. Thanks to Juan Leal in San Diego for these clips. Enjoy!

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Keeping the cameramen in Studio 6A on their toes, here’s Chris Farley on Conan from the New York days. Check out the last 40 seconds or so and notice that they (like SNL) are using a sound boom here too. Thanks to ABC camera veteran Howie Zeideman for sharing.

By God… 99.9er% of this video was made possible by the user XposeTruth. Watch the original here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuKyve4_ft4

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JUST ADDED TO THE COLLECTION!

I’m happy to share these first pictures of an Ikegami 377 that I have just added to my collection.

The green CBS logos are added as a tribute to 46 year CBS veteran cameraman Dave Dorsett who retired from the David Letterman show in December, 2011. Each camera on that stage has a different colored CBS logo and this was Dave’s color.

This camera is one of two 377s I have. Both began service at Turner Broadcasting and later were donated to WPBA in Atlanta and were recently retired. My thanks to WPBA for these cameras and for helping me round out the collection to include some of the more recent studio sized, hard bodied cameras.

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Water Cooled Studio Lighting…1944

Recently a few discussion questions have popped up…one of them on the GE Mercury Vapor studio lights that were water cooled. Yes, it sounds a bit crazy, but they had them and GE made them. Above is a page from the 1944 GE Catalog that can be found on the ARCIHIVES page of Eyes Of A Generation. There is a lot of other interesting information there too.

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Finally…A HOT CAMERA! I’m quite happy to finally have a working camera in my collection. This is a Sony BVP 370, the first Sony chip camera and it came from WXIA/WATL in Atlanta complete with rack and monitor. In the video I call it a 360 tube camera, but found out just after I did this that it was the 370.

The rack controls 3 BVP 360 hard body cameras and one handheld. I have all 3 hard bodied cameras and am quite greatful to many people for all their help in obtaining, transporting and set up including Gary C, Joe L, Gary L, John M and Cliff C. One slip in my narration…Pat Weaver was the first president of NBC TV, not RCA TV.

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Interesting! Sammy opens the show in front of a crane mounted TK41. If you look closely, you see the teleprompter moving on the camera behind him too. Back then, all that had to sync up with cables.

Thanks to our friend John Pinto, (who has been a Saturday Night Live cameraman since the start, and is now operates Camera 1 on the Chapman Electra crane) we know that this was at NBC Brooklyn with NBC veteran Frank Gaeta “in the bucket” seat.  I love the Voice Overs at the end…you may too so be sure to listen. Memories!

Two True Rarities…

Rarity One…the striped banding on the RCA TK11/31s. This was fairly common on the TK10/30 at CBS and this was actually a quick grey scale adjustment for cameras. The TK11/31 handle in front of the grey bars diluted their purpose, so they quit using the bars on the TK11/31 cameras soon after this.

Rarity Two…this photo is from set up of the April 8, 1955 ‘Person To Person’, live interview with Marilyn Monroe from a home in Connecticut. The link above is the interview itself done by Edward R. Murrow, who was live in NYC.

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Thanks to the fabulous RCA TK41s and NBC Burbank crew, here are 2 GREAT back to back Andy Williams Christmas songs. Even as degraded as the online video is, look how brilliant the color and sharp the image! Remember, a lot of this is done with big Houston Fearless 30B cranes and sound booms flying every where. Notice in the second song, the wreath has to go over the big Varitol 5 lens and stay there till the end, when it tries to come back just a few seconds early for the final shot. Now THIS is REAL TV! Merry Christmas!

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Here is the one of two very rare lenses donated to the Pavek Museum…this one is a 27 element Zoomar long lens used at CBS Television City (the other lens is in the next post down on this page). Although Steve does not have the full history on these 2 great rarities, this one has the CBS markings. Congratulations Steve!

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What A Find! Steve Raymer at The Pavek Museum in the Minneapolis area has received some lens donations and this one is a real treasure. This is a very rare Walker Electra Zoom lens. Joe Walker worked with Frank Capra and made and designed special lenses to be used specifically on over 50 of Hollywood’s leading ladies. This is the first zoom lens. In the early 50s, Walker sold the company to RCA who continued manufacturing and improving this first electronic zoom lens, but kept the Electra Zoom name.

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Hot off the presses! Here is the 3rd part of Jame O’Neal’s great series on collections and museums! Enjoy and pass it along!

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/keeping-early-television39s-legacy-alive

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Here’s the official Vinten Timeline on their creations for those of you, like me, that have wondered when what came out. FYI, the Mark III head came in ’58 and the Fulmar pedestal in ’74. Quite interesting…enjoy!

https://www.vinten.com/en/about-us/

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So glad to see this story on the old equipment and museums! Glad my friends at the MBT in Boston are progressing! Great to see the Steve’s Ohio and Geoff’s W. Virginia museum and collections get some much deserved attention!

https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/keeping-early-television39s-legacy-alive

ALEXANDRIA, VA.—In this world of handheld HD, 3DTV origination, and flat screen displays, it’s easy to take television’s roots for granted. We’ve

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