Looking Back: Videotape Revolutionized TV Broadcasting 50 Years Ago

[CrankyYankee]

(From VOA News

Before Internet video and DVDs, home video was dominated by the VHS format, which dates to the mid-'70s. Other formats - for both professional and home use - came and went during the years, but in a way they are all direct descendants of a product introduced 50 years ago this week -- the first commercially practical videotape recorder, developed by California-based Ampex Corporation.

(Read this article at

http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-04-14-voa45.cfm<P ID="signature">______________
"What's That?" "French Horns!"

</P>

 

[oldschooler]

> (From VOA News
>
> Before Internet video and DVDs, home video was dominated by
> the VHS format, which dates to the mid-'70s. Other formats -
> for both professional and home use - came and went during
> the years, but in a way they are all direct descendants of a
> product introduced 50 years ago this week -- the first
> commercially practical videotape recorder, developed by
> California-based Ampex Corporation.
>
> (Read this article at
>
>
http> ://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2006-04-14-voa45.cfm
>
What an excellent article on a truly momentous event for broadcasting. Little do people nowadays realize the policy revolution that videotape brought about: Because it looked as good as a live product, there was worry that an audience could be "fooled" into believing that product was live. Not even ten years before that, NBC radio had a policy that EVERYTHING was live.
Bing Crosby, on ABC radio, was one of the very first to use magnetic tape for his shows, rather than discs, starting that revolution.
There was controversy when the dramatic shows of the day began to be recorded ahead of time on videotape, around 1958 - shows like Playhouse 90. Even then, there was worry that not doing them "live" would lose something, somehow, in the "feel" of the show.
And can you believe -- even the Today show with Dave Garroway was recorded for a short time, the day before?!?

 

[TheREALJM1]

> > Bing Crosby, on ABC radio, was one of the very first to use
> magnetic tape for his shows, rather than discs, starting
> that revolution.
>Bing was one of the very early advocates of tape. He was always interested in the technical side of the business to improve the sound of his recordings and push the state of the art. He was one of the first investers in what became the Ampex Corp. It was what made him very rich.

 

[Stanislav]

> What an excellent article on a truly momentous event for
> broadcasting. Little do people nowadays realize the policy
> revolution that videotape brought about: Because it looked
> as good as a live product, there was worry that an audience
> could be "fooled" into believing that product was live. Not
> even ten years before that, NBC radio had a policy that
> EVERYTHING was live.


Pretty much all radio networks banned the use of "transcriptions," at least in news shows. One of the only exceptions ever made was for the famous Hindenburg disaster report, which was transcribed on disc and aired after the fact. Also, I think there were a few key speeches and such during WWII that were allowed to run on delay.

> Bing Crosby, on ABC radio, was one of the very first to use
> magnetic tape for his shows, rather than discs, starting
> that revolution.


And he was one of the biggest investors behind the earliest efforts to produce a practial video tape system. As early as 1951 or 1952, his people had developed a crude, impractical, but working setup. (I think the main problems were getting the video to retain sync, plus the tape speed had to be so fast that they could only do about 10 minutes of video at a time.)

> There was controversy when the dramatic shows of the day
> began to be recorded ahead of time on videotape, around 1958
> - shows like Playhouse 90. Even then, there was worry that
> not doing them "live" would lose something, somehow, in the
> "feel" of the show.


It took awhile before tape was routinely used as a pre-production tool, especially because it could not yet be easily or cleanly edited. (They literally had to physically splice the tape, like film, and if the cut was a millimeter or two off, it produced a glitch or momentary vertical roll at the edit point). Some of the more avant garde comedians experimented with it. Jonathan Winters experimented with pre-taping himself doing one of his characters, then doing a 2nd character live and interacting via a split-screen. And Ernie Kovacs was playing with videotape at least as early as 1959, in the first incarnation of his silent character Eugene, for a critically acclaimed special that first got Hollywood's attention, leading to his many character roles on film in the last few years of his life. (That was also the first occurrence of his legendary "tilted table" routine.)

Early on, the primary practical use of tape was for time shifting, either for different time zones (they would tape the East Coast feed and rebroadcast it three hours later on the West Coast) or for Daylight Savings Time -- in those days, DST laws were an uneven patchwork across the country, and the start and stop dates or even the mere observance or non-observance of DST was done at the state level or even indicidual counties or regions. There were times in early Spring, for instance, when some Central Time Zone stations were a full two hours behind New York, because NY had already "spring forward" while parts of the Midwest had not. Rather than have the entire network schedule starting at 5:30 pm, and Johnny Carson airing as early as 9:30, they would on their own initiative tape delay the network feed.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Wasn't Bing Crosby also an early investor in Minute Maid (orange juice), and made an eight-figure capital gain when Coca-Cola acquired that company??

Before and after the acquisition by Coke, Crosby was also Minute Maid's TV and radio commercial spokesman.

I thought Crosby always said in his commercials something like "Minute Maid is different from the other leading brands of orange juice, just like Crosby is different from Hope".

 

[oldiesfan]

> Pretty much all radio networks banned the use
> of "transcriptions," at least in news shows.
> One of the only exceptions ever made was for the
> famous Hindenburg disaster report, which was
> transcribed on disc and aired after the fact.

Herb Morrison from the Big 89 WLS. (Or was it
Les Nessman of WKRP? I can't recall which ;-)


> Early on, the primary practical use of tape
> was......for Daylight Savings Time......
> when some Central Time Zone stations were a full
> two hours behind New York, because NY had already
> "spring forward" while parts of the Midwest had not.
> Rather than have the entire network schedule starting
> at 5:30 pm, and Johnny Carson airing as early as 9:30,
> they would on their own initiative tape delay the
> network feed.

Actually--and this has been noted in previous threads
(thanks, bpatrick!)--starting around 1958 or 59 and
running through 1966, the networks themselves provided
a tape-delayed feed one hour later during DST so those
ET and CT stations in standard time areas could keep
their schedules on the same clock time as in the winter.

We still haven't solved one piece of that puzzle, namely
how AT&T Long Lines accomplished the switching/routing
of each feed to the correct areas. Would still like to
hear from any retired TV MC engineers or Telco techs!

This practice was discontinued after the 1966 DST season
as the Uniform Time Act took effect in 1967. At that
point, stations in states which opted out of DST truly
were on their own in terms of delaying the network...
along with the Mountain time zone which seemingly never
got a break until the NBC Mountain zone feed came along
circa 1986.

 

[Stanislav]

> Actually--and this has been noted in previous threads
> (thanks, bpatrick!)--starting around 1958 or 59 and
> running through 1966, the networks themselves provided
> a tape-delayed feed one hour later during DST so those
> ET and CT stations in standard time areas could keep
> their schedules on the same clock time as in the winter.
>
> We still haven't solved one piece of that puzzle, namely
> how AT&T Long Lines accomplished the switching/routing
> of each feed to the correct areas. Would still like to
> hear from any retired TV MC engineers or Telco techs!


Check out the site http://long-lines.net/ -- the answers may not be there, but perhaps you can contact someone with the site who can steer you to an answer.