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In early 2011, color television historian, the late Ed Reitan, shared with me a page he was developing for his website. It included information about the Colonial theater. I have been unsuccessful finding a finished version on either his site or the internet, so I have extracted pertinent information about the Colonial and generated the following edited information:
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The Colonial Theater, at Broadway and 62nd Sreet in New York City, was NBC’s first large-scale production Color Television Studio. The first color transmission from the Colonial was on March 19, 1953; it featured the puppet show Kukla, Fran, and Ollie.
The Colonial Theater was the second RCA-NBC Color studio in New York. It followed the experimental Color Studio, 3H, at Rockefeller Center. This earlier studio had been where color television evolved from RCA Dot-Sequential Color to NTSC Color.
Operational experience gained from Studio 3H was used in the development of the Colonial Theater. Four TK-40 cameras were installed in the Colonial along with a slide scanner and a 16mm motion picture film scanner.
Beginning in March 1953, the Colonial Theater studio was the origination point for all NBC network colorcasts. Studio 3H continued to be used only for experimental purposes.
Then, gradually, after the opening of a Brooklyn Color Studio in September 1954, NBC's New York color operations began transitioning to Brooklyn. With the opening of a second color studio (Brooklyn II) MAJOR operations at the Colonial Theater were phased out, but the Colonial continued to produce live color commercials for insertion into productions from the Brooklyn studios.
Some of the programs for which COMMERCIALS originated from the Colonial include:
"Satin and Spurs" Sunday September 12, 1954. (The First Color Spectacular) With Betty Hutton, Kevin McCarthy, Genevieve.
"Peter Pan" Monday March 7, 1955. with Mary Martin and Cyril Richard.
"The Esther Williams Show" Saturday September 29, 1956.
In 1960-1961, operations at the Colonial Theater were phased out.
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