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When was 16mm B&W Kinescopes last used?

S

spencerkarter85

I've seen B&W Kinescopes of "Dark Shadows" (even the lost color episodes exist only in B&W Kinescopes until 1970) before. I've also seen B&W Kinescopes of color episodes of "General Hospital" (one from 1968 and one from circa 1975), ABC Evening News from 1968-76, "One Life to Live" from 1969, various "American Bandstand" episodes from late 1960s/early 1970s, and even "The Dating Game" from 1968, that was ABC. On CBS, I saw B&W Kinescopes of ATWT from 1972. On NBC, B&W Kinescopes of "Days of Our Lives" from 1966 for example.

What year was the last time B&W kinescopes were last used?
 
It might depend upon which "station" or "network" one is watching.

I cannot say for sure, but I'd think that AFRTS/AFN programming was still using kinnies well into the 1970s & maybe 1980s....that is, if you count AFRTS.

cd
 
spencerkarter85 said:
I've seen B&W Kinescopes of...ABC...CBS...NBC (shows).
Click to expand...

Where have you seen the kinnies--archived stuff on YouTube and similar or actually watched
them on air on perhaps a non-interconnected affiliate (in Montana or somewhere)?
 
The last ones I am aware of were made by the CBC in 1971 or 72. They used to ship them via air
to remote stations in outlying locations like Newfoundland and the Yukon. The practice ceased when
they got the entire network linked by satellite in the early 70's.

Some of these turn up from time to time as "classic" games on the MLB Network, the NHL Network
or ESPN Classic. They are games from an era where color and tape were standard, but are shown
in B&W kinescope form.

Supposedly the American networks re-used the tapes and the only copies that exist are these
Canadian kinescopes.
 
Depended on the market. In the big markets of upstate NY (Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse) videotape had supplanted kinescopes by the early 1960s. They used black and white VTRs at first, but color tape was in use pretty generally by late in the 1960s, when the networks were also nearly full-color and local newscasts were produced in color as well.

16 mm color film for news purposes lasted a lot longer, well into the 1970s, before it gave way everywhere to ENG units around 1977-78.
 
and also it also depends on when some stations bought their first tape machines. Some countries may have not got their first tape machines until the mid-late 70s as the BBC was still doing B&W kinescopes of Doctor Who as late as 1975-76. in the USA, maybe as late as 1970, but worldwide, depends on when the station adopted color TV and got their first video tape.

Sample of a 1970 BBC program shot on color tape, but is only a B&W kinescope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=lUIPMxI37-0
 
cwf1701 said:
and also it also depends on when some stations bought their first tape machines. Some countries may have not got their first tape machines until the mid-late 70s as the BBC was still doing B&W kinescopes of Doctor Who as late as 1975-76. in the USA, maybe as late as 1970, but worldwide, depends on when the station adopted color TV and got their first video tape.

Sample of a 1970 BBC program shot on color tape, but is only a B&W kinescope: http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=lUIPMxI37-0
Click to expand...

Also the pilot episode of Are You Being Served? from 1972 exist only in B&W Kinescope despite it was originally in Color. The rest of the episodes are in color as well.
 
Saw a 1969 Christmas episode of the Concentration game show on You Tube about a year ago. This surprises me because earlier that year I saw a color (yes COLOR) kinnie of the Hugh Downs Today show from 1970 also on You Tube. That surprises me too...as NBC never considered the video quality of color kinnies not of broadcast quality if I am not mistaken here.
 
The final original Concentration episode from 1973 w/ Bob Clayton is also on YouTube now, a color kinnie. Better see it before it's yanked....

cd
 
cd637299 said:
It might depend upon which "station" or "network" one is watching.

I cannot say for sure, but I'd think that AFRTS/AFN programming was still using kinnies well into the 1970s & maybe 1980s....that is, if you count AFRTS.
Click to expand...
...AFRTS, as it originates much of its own exclusive content, most certainly qualifies as a network. It's strange that you would question that. The overall 6 March 1969 Tonight Show with Bob Hope*, Dean Martin* and George Gobel (*alleged "unexpected walk-on" guests) partially exists as an AFRTS 16mm color kinnie, while I believe sections of the Gobel segment itself exist on videotapes of anniversary specials in the Carson Productions vaults. A few years back, WWOR aired a tribute special to Dr. Frank Field (who was then doing weekend weather duty on Channel 9 in New York), and a few colour kinescopes of Dr. Field's appearances on The Tonight Show as well as Johnny Carson's stopping by WNBC-TV newscasts to add gags to Dr. Field's weathercasts, were incorporated. I assume these were kinnies taken at WNBC-TV itself, as the special claimed they were from Dr. Field's personal collection...

...interestingly, the 10 June 1968 prime time special Here's Dick Cavett, made up of clips from the first few months of Cavett's morning talk show on ABC, exists as a black&white kinnie (even tho announcer Fred Foy proclaims the half-hour to be "in color"), while the 6 August 1968 Dick Cavett Show appearance by Joanne Carson exists as a 16mm color kinnie. Both are on the Dick Cavett Show: Comedy Legends DVD set. The entire nighttime run of Cavett's ABC shows (starting with his summer 1969 thrice-weekly prime time run) exist on videotape, per Cavett's Daphne Productions' contract with ABC...
 
Joe_Capitano said:
KyDXIn said:
Try this on for size, and sing-along if you wish! :)
(see above for link)
Click to expand...
Come on now, you can't count that. Green Acres is a filmed program to begin with.
Click to expand...
Green Acres was filmed in color. This is black and white and appears to be a kinoscope. If this isn't a kinoscope, then what is it?
 
KyDXIn said:
Joe_Capitano said:
KyDXIn said:
Try this on for size, and sing-along if you wish! :)
(see above for link)
Click to expand...
Come on now, you can't count that. Green Acres is a filmed program to begin with.
Click to expand...
Green Acres was filmed in color. This is black and white and appears to be a kinoscope. If this isn't a kinoscope, then what is it?
Click to expand...

The networks would make B&W Film Prints of Color Film Shows for affiliates that were secondary affiliates airing shows in different time slots and/or not directly hooked up to the network feed via the coaxial hook-up. This went on till around 1968 or so, depending on the network.
 
...as well, several affiliates of each of the networks were not color capable until as late as the 1970s. I distinctly recall seeing TV Guide Wisconsin Edition notations indicating that CBS, ABC and NBC programs were in color except for over WSAU-TV/7 Wausau WI as late as 1968, and some of the programs that KFIZ-TV/34 Fond du Lac would retransmit, both live and tape-delayed, from the OTA signal of WVTV/18 Milwaukee would also appear in black&white over 34 even if 18 showed them in color (both AWA All-Star Wrestling and Roller Game of the Week were in black&white over KFIZ as late as early 1972)...
 
Aren't most existing copies of the "Red Skelton" show from the 1950s kinescopes? If I remember correctly wasn't the show broadcast in color at some point?

Also, aren't the remaining copies of the Betty White series "Life with Elizabeth" kinescopes? Very innovative for its time-- close-ups, breaking the fourth wall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eb5ic0IYA0
 
KyDXIn said:
Aren't most existing copies of the "Red Skelton" show from the 1950s kinescopes? If I remember correctly wasn't the show broadcast in color at some point?
Click to expand...
...as I recall, the surviving CBS Skelton programs are kinescopes. The first two seasons on NBC, except for one live broadcast from San Francisco, were all direct-to-film...
 
The later episodes of Red Skelton. Concerning the B/W episode of "Are You Being Served", It was originally in color but the tape was either erased or lost, only a B/W copy existed, because black and white kinescopes were sent to stations that didn't carry the network feed. The color from the film was recently restored. However it was NOT colorized. Somehow they have figured out how to recover color information on old B/W kinescopes. There is some hidden "code" or signal imbeded in a TV broadcast that you weren't intended to see, that is used to sycronize the color signal. Most stations had a filter that prevented this from appearing on the film, but if the filters were turned off the chroma signal would be visible as dots of interference. several years ago a software program was developed that could decode these signals and recreate the original color and it could be superimposed over the B/W film. It sounds impossible, but apparently it worked because according to wikipedia, several episodes of Dr. Who, and Dad's Army have also had the color restored. This is different from colorization. colorization is nothing more that glorified hand tinting using computors. Its almost impossible to tell what the originals colors were supposed to look like. which explains why many early colorized films look "cartoony"
 
flytrap said:
The later episodes of Red Skelton. Concerning the B/W episode of "Are You Being Served", It was originally in color but the tape was either erased or lost, only a B/W copy existed, because black and white kinescopes were sent to stations that didn't carry the network feed.
Click to expand...

Where the BBC is concerned, I think all its transmitters were connected into a network by this time -- any B&W kinnies of color BBC programs were mainly either for archival purposes or for international distribution, especially to countries where color was not yet used (some of the early-1970s "Doctor Who" episodes that survived as B&W kinnies were discovered in Australia, where colorcasting did not begin until 1975).
 
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