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First Color show memories

I remember in the early 1960s, the restaurant across the street from our house got the first color TV, possibly, in town. They even used to have a sign behind the bar listing whatever shows were in color; I distinctly remember being allowed - at age 6 or 7 - to sit in the bar area and watch "Bonanza." (We didn't get our first color set at home until 1968, just in time for the Winter Olympics that year.)
 
> > We did not get a color set at my house until 1974 or 75,
> > don't remember exactly. My father felt that color was an
> > unnecessary luxury, like fabric softener or touch-tone
> > dialing.
>
> OMG that sounds like my father! We didn't have a color TV
> until '74, and that's only because my grandparents unloaded
> their RCA color console (aka piece of furniture) on us when
> they bought a new Sony Trinitron (which my grandfather still
> uses to this day!) I remember watching the Watergate
> hearings on the color set just after my grandfather brought
> it in. I also remember watching Felix the Cat cartoons in
> color on WSMW 27 (the current WUNI Worcester MA).
>

Yes, and believe it or not, my father STILL does not have
touch-tone dialing!
 
> Bravo ccmfan you are correct on Zucker Abrahams Zucker, but
> I stand firm on the voice over guy for the credits. if you
> listen to the "cannon" theme from tim'stvshowcase.com and
> the "police squad" theme the voice overs are scary alike
> especially when the announcer says william conrad.

The announcer's name is Hank Simms, sometimes credited as Henry Fry Simms.

I'm reasonably certain that Abraham and the Zucker Brothers did indeed have him do the opening announcements for Police Squad.<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
I believe it was around 1962/63 that we first saw a color TV showing Bananza in a Radio/TV store. I remember us going to a neighbors house to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade in California on New Years Day. Around 1965 our family finally got a color TV. I remember NBC having the most color shows with CBS and ABC trailing behind. Of course, NET (National Educational Television) the predicessor of PBS didn't have any color shows. It seemed that even as PBS they were slower to go to color, obviously the cost of the equipment probably was a factor for both the network and the local stations.

> > My first memories of watching color TV were away from
> home,
> > as my family did not get their first color TV until March
> of
> > 1968. It was a used RCA set which lasted a year under our
> > ownership (and was quickly replaced by a bnrand-new
> Sylvania
> > Home Entertainment Center).
> >
> > I'm pretty sure that while in a TV or appliance store, I
> may
> > have seen a piece of a World Series game as a very young
> > child.
> >
> > In early September of 1966, my family was spending a
> weekend
> > in Onset, Massachusetts, and on Saturday night, we went to
> a
> > pizza restaurant that had a color-TV. I remember it was
> > showing a football game (probably a pre-season NFL game as
> I
> > think the color-TV was tuned into CBS and I think they
> aired
> > some prime-time NFL pre-season games that far back).
> >
> > Another early color-TV memory was Halloween 1967, while
> > trick-or-treating. My Mom took my brother and I to the
> home
> > of a neighbor she was a very close friend of. They had a
> > color-TV and invited us in for a few minutes. I remember
> > that the TV was tuned into NBC, and "Daniel Boone" was on.
>
> > Around 8 P.M.(?), the show was interrupted for an "NBC
> News
> > Special Report", and I remember President Johnson came on
> to
> > make a televised speech about Vietnam.
> >
>
> The first show I remember seeing in color was My Mother the
> Car, believe it or not, at a relative's house in Nashville.
> My parents never bought a color TV until the middle 70's and
> it was a used hotel set which didn't last long. After that
> they bought a console in the late 70's.
>
 
> I remember NBC having the most color shows
> with CBS and ABC trailing behind.

This is well-documented in history, of course.

NBC and CBS had been competing for the national standard, each with a system incompatible with the others. CBS had a system that was even incompatible with established monochrome telecasts, and had advocated that all television broadcasting move to UHF, since existing VHF receivers would have been rendered useless anyway. When NBC eventually got the upper hand -- due mostly to the fact that their system was receivable, sans color, on monochrome sets -- CBS delayed going color until someone <u>other</u> than NBC's parent, RCA, developed the equipment to transmit in color.

ABC lacked the money to go color until the mid-1960s and even when they started to do so, it was phased in over a few seasons.

> Of course, NET (National
> Educational Television) the predicessor of PBS didn't have
> any color shows. It seemed that even as PBS they were
> slower to go to color, obviously the cost of the equipment
> probably was a factor for both the network and the local
> stations.

Kind of a Catch-22, actually. As PBS was dependent on its member stations to produce its programming, it was a mix of color and monochrome for many years; as the stations got enough pledge money to upgrade, programming gradually became all-color. As the transition slowly happened, you would have shows produced in color but broadcast in monochrome on affiliates that lacked color, as well as color stations broadcasting monochrome shows because the producing stations lacked color capability.<P ID="signature">______________


</P>
 
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Bravo ccmfan you are correct on Zucker Abrahams Zucker,
> but
> > I stand firm on the voice over guy for the credits. if you
>
> > listen to the "cannon" theme from tim'stvshowcase.com and
> > the "police squad" theme the voice overs are scary alike
> > especially when the announcer says william conrad. Of
> > course, it could be a very good imitation. By the way,
> just
> > curious, is the name ccmfan a reference to the hockey
> > equipment company?
> >
>
> I'd guess that having a similar announcer and opening like
> most QM shows was probably meant to be an imitation.
>
> ccmfan came from contemporary Christian music. I started
> using that whan I was mostly posting on the Religious,
> Memphis, and Nashville boards, and then I drifted over to
> the TV boards later, which I post more on now. I didn't
> think about the hockey equipment at the time. :)
> Right on. I never even thought of CCM standing for contemporary christian music. and to think, I want to work in radio. D'oh :)
 
> In early September of 1966, my family was spending a weekend
> in Onset, Massachusetts, and on Saturday night, we went to a
> pizza restaurant that had a color-TV. I remember it was
> showing a football game (probably a pre-season NFL game as I
> think the color-TV was tuned into CBS and I think they aired
> some prime-time NFL pre-season games that far back).
>

The game was on September 10, 1966 and it was at 9:30pm and it was between the Baltimore Colts against the Green Bay Packers and they were playing at County Stadium in Milwaukee as it said from the New York Times Electronic Database
 
> Here's one for you old folks...
>
> What are your earliest memories of color TV? Maybe your
> first color TV in the family,

FWIW I'm 44 and we got our first color TV (a Zenith) in around 1967, the year I turned 6 (on August 27, the day Brian Epstein [yes, *that* one] died, but that's another thread).

It replaced a B&W General Electric with a record player on top (you had to flip the lid over to open it up). My mom always called it a "Victrola" although it a) hardly resembled one and B) was not manufactured by RCA. That Zenith is the first TV I remember watching UHF channels on.

And before that GE (I know this from old pics of me in diapers) we had a Motorola that, once we got the GE, we gave to my grandparents across town.

ixnay
 
I wrote:

> In early September of 1966, my family was spending a
> weekend in Onset, Massachusetts, and on Saturday night, we went to
> a pizza restaurant that had a color-TV. I remember it was
> showing a football game (probably a pre-season NFL game as
> I think the color-TV was tuned into CBS and I think they
> aired some prime-time NFL pre-season games that far back).

Highwayman128 responded:

> The game was on September 10, 1966 and it was at 9:30pm and
> it was between the Baltimore Colts against the Green Bay
> Packers and they were playing at County Stadium in Milwaukee
> as it said from the New York Times Electronic Database

The funny thing is I was going to say that Green Bay might have been playing because I thought I saw the Packers' green uniforms and golden-yellow helmets. That indeed was the night and the game!
 
K.M. Richards wrote:

> Kind of a Catch-22, actually. As PBS was dependent on its
> member stations to produce its programming, it was a mix of
> color and monochrome for many years; as the stations got
> enough pledge money to upgrade, programming gradually became
> all-color. As the transition slowly happened, you would
> have shows produced in color but broadcast in monochrome on
> affiliates that lacked color, as well as color stations
> broadcasting monochrome shows because the producing stations
> lacked color capability.

Outside of major markets (where member stations were/are generally owned by private-sector nonprofit organizations), most PBS member stations were (and still are) owned by state universities, state departments of education, or state educational broadcasting authorities. The capital needed to convert to color may have been from state appropriation. Perhaps in it's early days, CPB also provided grants to stations to help convert to color.

Here in Boston, WGBH-2 began broadcasting local color programs in September of 1967, around the time sister station WGBX-44 first went on the air. I'n not 100% sure, but I thought the reason WGBH held it's first on-air auction in 1966 was to raise funds to convert to color broadcasting.

If WGBH wasn't the very first NET (now PBS) member station to have local live/tape color, it was one of the first. It's possible that WNDT-13 (now WNET) New York, and/or WETA-26 Washington, and/or KQED-9 San Francisco/Oakland may have preceded WGBH in local color, but if they did, it probably wasn't by much. I doubt any noncommercial station had local color capability prior to 1967.
 
> Outside of major markets (where member stations were/are
> generally owned by private-sector nonprofit organizations),
> most PBS member stations were (and still are) owned by state
> universities, state departments of education, or state
> educational broadcasting authorities. The capital needed to
> convert to color may have been from state appropriation.

Don't forget the local school boards themselves -- some school boards have owned TV stations themselves in the past; some still do (like KLVX in Las Vegas and KSPS in Spokane).<P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by rugrats1 on 04/14/06 06:11 PM.</FONT></P>
 
> > I remember NBC having the most color shows
> > with CBS and ABC trailing behind.
>
> This is well-documented in history, of course.
>
> NBC and CBS had been competing for the national standard,
> each with a system incompatible with the others. CBS had a
> system that was even incompatible with established
> monochrome telecasts, and had advocated that all television
> broadcasting move to UHF, since existing VHF receivers would
> have been rendered useless anyway. When NBC eventually got
> the upper hand -- due mostly to the fact that their system
> was receivable, sans color, on monochrome sets -- CBS
> delayed going color until someone other than NBC's parent,
> RCA, developed the equipment to transmit in color.
>
> ABC lacked the money to go color until the mid-1960s and
> even when they started to do so, it was phased in over a few
> seasons.
>

CBS did do colorcasts in the mid-fifties -- using RCA equipment - however, as the decade went on, that net did fewer and fewer. One oldtime network engineer is quoted on one website as saying that by the early sixties, their color studios in NYC were so seldom used, powering them up was a major affair, they took so long to tune the cameras.

Here's some great information on each net's color capabilities, from Ed Reitan's wonderful site:

http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/studios.html

My uneducated guess as to the first CBS color show of the sixties would be "The Lucy Show", at about 1963?? I know The Beverly Hillbillies went color in maybe the third season (anyone care to chime in on that one?)

Traditional conventional knowledge holds that ABC's first color show was "The Flintstones", which premiered in 1960. They were doing "The Hollywood Palace" in color in 1966, using those wonderful old TK-41's from RCA. And at least the last season of "Ozzie and Harriet" was in color, in 1965, maybe the last two.

NBC went full color at the start of 1966. The other two nets followed suit the following fall.

It is doubtful DuMont ever did a color show, though apparently they experimented with UHF color -- or at least, they made a test pattern for such!

http://members.aol.com/cingram/television/dumont8.htm

And as for NET/PBS color...I remember being at WCNY ch. 24 in Syracuse in 1969 or 1970, helping with their public auction, and they were already using GE color cameras in their studio. But, that was just them.

> > Of course, NET (National
> > Educational Television) the predicessor of PBS didn't have
>
> > any color shows. It seemed that even as PBS they were
> > slower to go to color, obviously the cost of the equipment
>
> > probably was a factor for both the network and the local
> > stations.
>
> Kind of a Catch-22, actually. As PBS was dependent on its
> member stations to produce its programming, it was a mix of
> color and monochrome for many years; as the stations got
> enough pledge money to upgrade, programming gradually became
> all-color. As the transition slowly happened, you would
> have shows produced in color but broadcast in monochrome on
> affiliates that lacked color, as well as color stations
> broadcasting monochrome shows because the producing stations
> lacked color capability.
>
 
> Here's one for you old folks...
>
> What are your earliest memories of color TV? Maybe your
> first color TV in the family, the neighborhood...First time
> u saw a color show...
>
> We got a color TV, a big Motorola, in 1965, I am pretty
> sure. I remember when WSYR (an NBC affiliate) went color, in
> about 1966, and they stopped showing the old (the best) B &
> W Popeye cartoons, I was so dissappointed! No one else at
> the time, I think , had color in our neighborhood.
>
> There were some shows I did not see in color until the
> mid-70's: those on PBS (WCNY ch. 24), because the motorola,
> or the subsequent RCA Victor color set (with the rounded
> tube) did not pick up UHF worth a damn, even though they had
> UHF tuners. I think the first time I saw Monty Python's
> Flying Circus in color was on a Sony Trinitron in 1975. Wow!
> Up til then, I watched all UHF on a little Panasonic I got
> for Christmas in 1969.
>
My brother bought an 8 year old RCA 25 inch console TV back in 1967, the first show I saw in color was the short-lived "Accidental Family". 2 weeks later the TV caught fire. It wasn't until 1971 we got our first new color set, an RCA XL-100. Mark Q¿Q
 
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