The First Known Videotape Edited Show…November 20, 1958, CBS

Seated on the right is director John Frankenheimer watching Ross Murray edit “Old Man”, which was a ‘Playhouse 90’ presentation that aired November 20, 1958.

This was the first time an entire production had ever been videotaped in advance and edited for air. The year before, Frankenheimer had used videotaped inserts in the live productions of two prior ‘Playhouse 90’ shows which were “Bomber’s Moon” and “The Days Of Wine And Roses”, but “Old Man” was a different ballgame.

Most of “Old Man” took place in a storm on the Mississippi River as an escaped convict fled from the law. The production used two studios at Television City (wet and dry) and was so daunting technically that the only way to do it was on tape. You can see some of the production shots below, including the huge Chapman movie crane they brought in.

On November 30, 1956 CBS had made history by tape delaying ‘Douglas Edwards With The News’ and again on October 13, 1957 when they used videotape to play back ‘The Edsel Show’ which aired live from Television City three hours earlier. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee




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15 Comments

  1. Don Whittaker October 14, 2016

    At KTLA, they rarely spliced videotape. When they did, the splicer had a microscope on it. A liquid was used to “develop” the synch marks so the final edit wouldn’t break-up. Usually, the final version was dubbed to clean tape, fearing the tape splices could fail during live playback.

  2. Daniel R Gannon III November 9, 2014

    How many of you remember the tape speed (30″/sec) and the heads (4) speed (14400 rpm) and the nail polish bottle with tiny sparkles which you painted on the tape to see where the head-switching pulses were in order to avoid a jump cut or frame roll?

  3. Marcus Pun November 8, 2014

    Stephen,with the VR-2000s you could edit on the fly.No frame accuracy until the late 60’s when EECO developed time code. I may still have one of their time code pamphlets.

  4. Arden Acord November 8, 2014

    Video editing was done the same way as audio or film. The media was the record and you had to physically slice, dice and splice to create the final product

  5. Howard Malley November 6, 2014

    You certainly have a lot of great material. I appreciate your posts more than you can know. Thank you!

  6. Charlie King November 6, 2014

    Looks like an Ampex VR-1000, which is what our first Videotape machine was in Amarillo Texas.

  7. James M Patterson November 6, 2014

    Love the ash tray on the side of the machine.

  8. Gary Donahue November 6, 2014

    Wow, and we think editing is a tedious process now.

  9. Alan Maretsky November 6, 2014

    How far it’s come…..

  10. Tim Stepich November 6, 2014

    I love this stuff. Very grateful to these men for making my career possible.

  11. Jerry Skora November 6, 2014

    > this had to be fun on a VR-1000…

  12. Tom Coughlin November 6, 2014

    Looking at these photos, I’m wondering if this was shot in New York. The Playhouse 90 ep. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was–my dad worked on it (that ep. was also taped and edited).

  13. Dennis Degan November 6, 2014

    I love how the floor is covered with pieces of videotape . . . . .

  14. Tom Houghton Asc November 6, 2014

    Fascinating. Also the boom with a light on it for a night scene over the water. Frankenheimer was brilliant, got to work with him once at the end of his career.

  15. Richard Michalak November 6, 2014

    The closest I ever got to that was knowing someone who used to tape splice edit videotape. You had to sprinkle the tape with iron filings to see where the magnetic bands were and cut between them for a clean cut.