Obsolete Terms Still Used on Radio & TV: Name One!

[tvnut]

ABC was the last of the big 3 to go all color. In his book, Leonard Goldenson said the conversion to color practically bankrupt the company. They had to buy cameras from RCA, who owned the competition NBC.

As I recall, Bandstand was briefly in color on WFIL but went back to B/W for production reasons.

ABC bought its first color cameras in 1966, a dozen TK-41s from RCA. It could have bought from Norelco, as CBS did the year before, but did not.

 

[michael hagerty]

ABC was the last of the big 3 to go all color. In his book, Leonard Goldenson said the conversion to color practically bankrupt the company. They had to buy cameras from RCA, who owned the competition NBC.

I zoned that while "Bandstand" was a Dick Clark Production, he used ABC's facilities for taping, so, yeah---the cost was the network's.

 

[TheBigA]

ABC bought its first color cameras in 1966, a dozen TK-41s from RCA. It could have bought from Norelco, as CBS did the year before, but did not.

Bill Paley was still pissed that his color system had not been approved by the FCC, so he did everything he could to prevent giving money to Sarnoff.

 

[michael hagerty]

Bill Paley was still pissed that his color system had not been approved by the FCC, so he did everything he could to prevent giving money to Sarnoff.

And there's a whole thing about that and Norelco cameras:

https://eyesofageneration.com/cameras-page/norelco-television-cameras-eyes-of-a-generation/

 

[secondchoice]

ABC was the last of the big 3 to go all color. In his book, Leonard Goldenson said the conversion to color practically bankrupt the company. They had to buy cameras from RCA, who owned the competition NBC.

Who did CBS use?

 

[michael hagerty]

Who did CBS use?

Norelco.

 

[secondchoice]

Sorry for the late question. Sometimes my posts take time to populate. I see now Thanks for not being snarky like some of the posters here.

 

[Cordelia Chase]

How about "fan mail?" Of course, fans today use social media to connect with their favorite stars, but back in the day, you had to send correspondence via good old snail mail.

Same thing with radio station contest entries: listeners had to mail a letter or even a postcard to the station. Nowadays the jock advises listeners to go to the station's website or Facebook page to enter.

 

[radiofan2023]

I’ve heard more “text to enter” contests than Facebook or website contests.

 

[CTListener]

Norelco.

Did they double as transportation for Santa Claus?

 

[radiofan2023]

They never shaved the cost of those cameras!

 

[Cordelia Chase]

I’ve heard more “text to enter” contests than Facebook or website contests.

I guess it's more like hit up our website for rules, contest date cut-off, rain date info and such, but yes, I've certainly heard jocks tell listeners to enter by text.

 

[michael hagerty]

Did they double as transportation for Santa Claus?

 

[michael hagerty]

They never shaved the cost of those cameras!

What I didn't know until I stumbled on that piece I linked to about the CBS Norelco cameras was that Norelco is and always has been Philips, the European electronics giant.

I had assumed that the more recent Philips Norelco brand was the result of a merger. But the real story is that they had to cook up the Norelco name----North American Philips Electrical Company---after Philco sued to keep Philips from marketing products in the US, claiming the names were too similar.

That was 1943 and it stuck until 1981, when Philips bought Philco, and was free to use its own name here.

 

[anotherguyTN]

I vaguely remember seeing the Philips record label in the US in the 70's, I think mainly on classical albums.

 

[Kelly A]

Ampex

 

[Ed Nielson]

I vaguely remember seeing the Philips record label in the US in the 70's, I think mainly on classical albums.A

A lot of pop singles in the 60s and even into the early 70s were on Philips. Their main artist was probably Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons. Paul Mauriat's "Love Is Blue" from '68 comes to mind.

 

[Ed Nielson]

Ampex

Good ol' Ampex 350! Couldn't kill 'em!

 

[Mark Roberts]

Dick was notoriously cheap. I’m sure he only went color after ABC insisted.

It might well have been ABC that was cheap.

For way too long - until 1971 - my hometown TV market had just two stations, NBC and CBS affiliates that shared the ABC secondary affiliation. But most of the ABC programming wound up on the NBC affiliate, including ABC's Movie of the Week. The local newspapers' "action line"-style columns featured frequent complaints about the fact that the Movie of the Week was in black and white. The station's explanation was always, "that's how ABC sends it to us and they refuse to send it to us in color."

Where I spent part of my childhood, it was a one-station TV market, though in many areas one could get two Des Moines stations with an outside antenna. The local station was an ABC affiliate, but carried a few CBS daytime programs. Then it filled the open time on its schedule in the late afternoons with ABC programming that it didn't clear from the usual network feed. It couldn't tape the ABC programming because its microwave relay to Des Moines was occupied with the CBS feed. So ABC supplied programs such as "Dark Shadows" and "Let's Make a Deal" to the local station...on kinescope. In the late 1960s. In black-and-white. Finally, KTVO prevailed upon the network to provide videotapes. Which ABC did...in black and white. The notable thing about that was that the audio quality on those tapes was better than what you'd get from a network feed, in the days when network audio still was limited to 5 kHz audio response.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Although, KCBS in San Francisco still uses o'clock for top-of-the hour. Frankly, "It's seven", would be kind of awkward there.

But in real life, no, I don't know anyone who says o'clock anymore.

Well, who in real life would start out talking about something by saying, "Authorities have...." ???

(Yeah, I did that way too many times, too. Even though I knew better. Time crunches.)