Lkeller said:
Hi, LK... I should have added a grin or something after my reference to film.
As you say, archives not necessarily being well kept would have been a problem for reels of film, reels of videotape (whatever format) or slides... that were often used for graphics and lower-third supers... the "Fred Smith, KBAD News" at the bottom of the screen.
Lkeller said:
Tape wasn't able to be used like film on routine news stories until two things happened. CBS's Joe Flaherty spurred Sony to adapt it's 3/4" Umatic format into something that worked in a news gathering and editing setting... and one piece broadcast cameras came on the market in 1976.
Electronic News Gathering--ENG--or Electronic Journalism--EJ--at NBC-- happened in a real way when RCA came out with the TK-76 at NAB in April of 1976. It was the first one-piece, three-tube color camera.
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/rca-tk76.jpg
or http://www.oldradio.com/archives/hardware/TV/RCA-TV.htm and scroll down to the TK-76.
I say "one piece CAMERA" because ya still needed a separate recording deck connected by 14 or 26 conductor cable. At first, it was a Sony VO-3800, later the broadcast specific BVU (Broadcast Video U-Matic) 100, 110 and 50 models which had XLR balanced audio inputs/outs and optional timecode on a special track. 3/4" was used until the Betacam format took root, with camera and recorder docked to each other in one piece.
Now, we're into digital tape, optical disk and memory chips for storing news images in the field.
Prior to 1976, tape's use for news was generally in studios, for network program delay and cherry-picking the network news and news feeds. It just wasn't portable enough to be used like film.
Commercially practical Videotape itself is 50 years old this year, and news was the first use: delay for West Coast broadcast the CBS nighttime news broadcast with Douglas Edwards.
It first happened on November 30, 1956 inside CBS Television City in Hollywood, using an Ampex recorder that used 2" wide tape and needed three racks of tube-type electronics to record and playback a picture.
Watch CBS on Thursday, Nov. 30, 2006 to see whether CBS's Katie Couric makes mention of the history that happened 50 years and three predecessors ago.
She could say something like... "A piece of broadcasting history continues at CBS Television City in Hollywood. The public use of videotape began on this network 50 years ago tonight. At (insert time) engineer (insert name) pushed a button on one of the very first videotape recorders, and recorded the CBS news with Douglas Edwards. Three hours later, the tape was played back for the Pacific time zone. We've been doing it for the last 18,250 nights, updating the West Coast broadcast live when there's breaking news." Maybe she could do the broadcast from Los Angeles, and do the close from the tech center.
The first entertainment show tape delayed also happened at CBS Television City almost a year later, when "The Edsel Show" was chosen to be the very first CBS entertainment program to be broadcast live to the nation from Hollywood, then "tape-delayed" for re-broadcast in the Pacific Time Zone. That happened on Oct. 13, 1957.
What happend to the tape is a "Paul Harvey" story:
http://www.kingoftheroad.net/edsel/edselshow1.html (and the two succesive pages)
The tape still exists in the CBS library and is expected to be seen by visitors who are on a special tour later this month (July, 2006).
For most field news coverage, silent or sound film cameras were the main-stay of local and network news into the 80's. You'd see a number of 60 Minutes stories shot on film into the late 1980's.
Film held forth in part because getting remote trucks, large cameras and large tape decks or microwave feeds on the scene of a breaking news event wasn't something done quickly. Sometimes, planning and then luck enabled networks or stations to be "live" when something unexpected happened, like when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on NBC.
As networks transitioned to full-color in 1965, 66 and 67, various companies developed portable color cameras that enabled "on the floor coverage" at the 1968 conventions, but these were heavy, two-piece affairs that often required two people to work: a camera operator and a backpack hauler.
These models were little more than studio camera electronics stuffed in two containers... a lens, optics and tubes in one, and the rest of the camera head's circuits in another. Some had to be tied to the engineering area by a thick, multiconductor camera cable, just like a studio camera, 'cause that's what they were.
After the TK-76 and other single piece cameras came out, some stations had a relatively rapid transition to ENG.
Others jumped in with both feet and avoided huge expenses by adopting industrial cameras.
At KXTV in Sacramento, they set a date to turn off the film processor, bought a number of one-tube Sony 1600 Trinicon cameras (which needed a shoebox-sized control unit and 10-conductor cable to the camera head) and Sony VO-3800 recorders. They put the control boxes and tape decks on little aluminum carts, designed, as I recall, by the Chief Photographer and riveted together by him or the engineering dept.
They tossed out the film rewinds, viewers and splicers and put pairs of VO-2800 edit decks on the edit benches. KXTV engineers took ten 3/4" decks with pause ability and made their own playback system for news tapes. On "E" day, the crews trundled out their new industrial (not broadcast) units, and became the first ALL electronic news operation in Sacramento.
I worked there in 1977 and had the joy of trying to make sure there was enough light on the subject to get good images with the one-tube cameras. Eventually the owners (Dow Jones through a subsidiary) bought 3-tube cameras for news and the station became more visually competitive with its rivals, primarily KCRA.
News Leader KCRA had a Bosch Fernseh two-piece camera (the original LiveCamera 3) and a Dodge Van with microwave gear prior to KXTV's switch. It soon bought TK-76's and eventually eased film out, but the process took years.
Part of the problem was the expense of camera equipment. A fully outfitted TK-76 with lens, battery belts, and tape deck might run $50,000. If you SHOT tape, you also had to have a way to EDIT tape. Broadcast U-matic edit decks, a controller, a couple of good picture monitors and audio mixing/monitoring could add another $20,000 to the situation.
Stations had to figure out how they were going to afford the transition. Many chose to add a couple of cameras and edit decks a year, while continuing to shoot and process film, using gear that was much less expensive and was already owned.
KCRA was the last place in Sacramento to have a 16mm film processor, and was where KTXL, 40 got its newsfilm souped when I worked at 40 in 1979. KTXL had three CP-16 film cameras, three film edit benches, two TK-76's and two pairs of Sony BVU-200A editors and edit controllers.
It was an interesting place to work because of that. I'd learned to edit tape at KXTV, so I was "bi-platformial" and could have worked either film or video. But the newer shooters at 40 didn't know how to shoot or edit film, so I shot and edited film. I think I had the best of it... with lighter equipment and the ability to scream through film in a big hurry and pull the pieces needed for a story--I think-- quicker than the guys editing tape at the time. I could also set up an A-B roll on two projectors (called a "simul-roll" at 40) and have dissolves or wipes in my material, which wasn't often done for 3/4" tape packages.
Eventually, KCRA shut down its processor... and that killed off the daily use of film in Sacramento news.
KCRA donated its film archives to the Sacramento History Center. Someone told me that KOVR (13) sent its film library to Sacramento State University. Not sure where KXTV or KTXL's film archives ended up.
Many of the Bay Area stations donated their film holdings to an arm of San Francisco State.
Where the KEMO stuff went is... known to only a few. And I'm not one of them.
Ted.