NBC’s Legendary Technical Director…Heino Ripp
FIRST, Don’t miss this! The Television Legends Interview Series taped six half hour segments with Mr. Ripp and the first of the series is linked below.
https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/heino-ripp?clip=102062#interview-clips
In the photo above, we see Heino starting his career in Studio 3H behind an RCA A500 Iconoscope camera. Below, he is literally the “right hand man” to another legend, Dwight Hemion (no headset), who is directing ‘The Perry Como Show’ at The Ziegfeld Theater.
Mr. Ripp was born with a mild deformity in the fingers of his left hand which kept him from serving in WWII. This allowed him to keep his new job at NBC, which he began in the early ’40s. All through the war years, he was there…learning and innovating.
Heino moved from the studio to the control room and soon became one of the network’s top technical directors….a role that he would continue in until his last years with NBC, in which he served as the TD on ‘Saturday Night Live’.
You name it, he saw it! When television took off after the war, Ripp was right in the middle of the biggest entertainment and technology explosion ever seen. Every big, live NBC show you can think of, Heino was there for.
Heino Ripp was the first T.D. that I worked with. R.I.P.