November 23: This Day in TV History

[Stanislav]

The episode of "That Was The Week That Was" that was shown on the NBC Television Network the weekend of the Kennedy assassination was not a kinescope recording of the program, but a videotaped recording. I have the NBC coverage (as well as the CBS coverage...purchased directly from the archives) and it is definitely videotape and not kinescope. The tape was hand carried to New York by BBC commentator Richard Dimbleby, who both introduced it and spoke about it afterward, along with Frank McGee during its first airing on Sunday night. It was a superb broadcast, hosted by among others, David Frost, and prepared with only a few hours notice. NBC aired it twice that weekend.

I (tentatively) believe you and your discerning eyes, but still.....did NBC really have the facilities for standards conversion in 1963? Or was the show somehow converted on the fly in the U.K. from British 405 lines to NTSC 525 lines? At any rate, every reference I've ever seen to the TW3 media refers to it as a film or telerecording (Britspeak for kinescope).

 

[davalvideo]

I've been working in television for 36 years, as a cameraman, reporter, producer....you name it...and for the last 17 years as owner of my own production company. The videotape of TWTW was converted on THIS end of the Atlantic before it was aired that weekend. As for what you may have read, publications, even broadcast publications, are sometimes mistaken, as they were in this case. The difference between videotape and kinescope, even a good quality kinescope, is easy to distinguish. Both Chet Huntley and Frank McGee, in their respective intros to the program, referred to the the broadcast of TWTW as neing on videotape. Here's another example of where people, with all good intentions, had it wrong. In Rather's 1977 book, The Camera Never Blinks, he talks about how KRLD "which telecast a lot of football" had the equipment to show Oswald's shooting in slow motion by slowing down the videotape. In fact, KRLD had no such capability yet...and it was not the tape that was slowed down, but a kinescope of the videotape, and then later the 16mm film shot by George Phoenix from a different angle. They could run film in slow motion, but not tape.

 

[davalvideo]

Also remember that on that weekend, a lot of NBC assassination related programming was flown and fed by satellite to countries around the world. The conversion was done on this end, as many of the countries that received coverage could not convert on their own. Also, on that very day, NBC was supposed to send the very first television satellite transmission from the US to Japan. JFK prerecorded a short segment from the White House (appearing uncharacteristically ill at ease) which was to be included in the broadcast, which was pre-recorded and hosted by Frank McGee and Jules Bergman of ABC. JFK's segment was in fact, broadcast on NBC on the night of the 22nd.