Commercial Television’s 75th Anniversary…Friday, July 1, 2016
Commercial Television’s 75th Anniversary…Friday, July 1, 2016
To set the stage for this week’s anniversary, I’ll lay out some pictures and share some little known stories about how broadcasters got ready for the move from experimental to commercial television. At the time, it was a big commitment to the new media, and involved a lot more than just changing call letters.
Two of the major obligations were in the money and staff area, as the legal commitment to the FCC required a promise to carry at least 15 hours of programing each week, and a fully tweaked upgrade to the 525 line resolution format, and many more newly adopted NTSC transmission guidelines, including audio via FM.
Although 10 new licenses were granted, the first two were for New York City stations operated by NBC and CBS.
New York actually had three stations, but Dumont’s experimental station W2XYV (that in 1944 became WABD), opted out on the first round siting technical and programing challenges. Money was probably also an issue for them then.
On June 24, 1941, NBC’s W2XBS and CBS’s W2XAB were granted permission to change to WNBT and WCBW, to become effective on July 1. Both were granted simultaneous sign on permission too, so that neither could lay claim to being the nation’s first commercial television station, but you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men.
1:30 was the stipulated sign on time that day, but CBS was an hour late coming to air and I’ve heard that it was the film camera chain that was the problem. With that in mind, today, we’ll take a look into the early days of CBS Studios 41 & 42 at Grand Central Terminal.
The photo below shows what I think is Studio 41 control room around 1942. Notice the two black square holes in the wall at the top of the photo. Those are the film port windows and hanging from the ceiling to their right is a track mounted RCA Iconoscope camera that slides into place over the ports to capture the film projected from the other side of the wall. I think that was the chain with the problem.
The man in the center is CBS legend Worthington Minor who was “Mr. Drama”, creator and director of “Studio 1” and an overseer of most CBS anthology shows. To his left is the assistant director and the audio man. To his right is what we now call at technical director and on this end, the video man. Thanks to Tom Buckley for his help. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
How interesting. Did they quit all experimentation during the war, or did it go on quietly, on a much smaller scale?
So Commercial television is 1 year older than me. I was born July 22, 1942, and this means commercial TV was 21 years old when I went to work at my first TV job, July 1, 1962. Hey how about that. Commercial TV was old enough to drink, when I started.