Quote:
Originally Posted by old_tv_nut
Thanks for posting that. Makes me wonder if any stations in the U.S. went on air with vidicon studio cameras.
I have seen plenty of vidicon film chains used in Chicago in past years, but no vidicon studio use I can recall.
Reminds me of a UHF station in Chicago that went on the air as an all-day stock market ticker / business report. I believe when they first went to color it was with a hand-me-down TK-41 from WGN. That camera was trained on the announcer so steadily, I often thought they could turn off the lights and run on the burned-in image. 
These days, as a digital station, they are running multiple subchannels of sitcoms, etc. |
Are you sure this wasn't the same station that, as of the late 1970's, had IVC 501 color studio cameras, one of which had a mini-monitor put on top as a viewfinder when the camera's own viewfinder burned out?
As for film chains in Chicago, which color chains were used as of the '70's by stations other than what I will mention? I know that WBBM, for many years after 1965, had RCA TK-27's - which were also used by WMAQ (I think - plus a few TK-26's left over from old days, probably TK-28's as well by the end of the decade), WGN, WFLD and that other UHF in question (presumably itself a hand-me-down). Which chains were used by the other stations in town (WLS, WTTW and WSNS)? Something tells me it was an all-RCA, almost all-TK-27 town, unless I'm mistaken on that.
But I thought TK-15's, besides industrial use, would have seen action at some public-access "CATV" stations at various parts of the country in the early years of their existence.