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Old 04-13-2018, 02:58 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
Posts: 4,035
I wonder how many of those sets were sold. Most TV stations and networks, except NBC, weren't broadcasting much color programming in 1956; many if not most local TV stations were not even set up for color telecasting then. Cincinnati's NBC affiliate, WLWT channel 5, was a pioneer in local color telecasting, being one of very few stations at the time to have the capability to broadcast color film, videotape, network and local programming. The only other TV stations to have such full color capability at the time were probably the network O & O (owned and operated) stations in (at the time) New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The rest broadcast network color shows in b&w, converting to color as their finances permitted; some stations in smaller cities may not have done so, again for financial reasons, until the 1960s or even the '70s. The networks all had color presentation logos (NBC's peacock, ABC's lower-case "abc" in the middle of a large black dot, and CBS' animated logo in which the letters "CBS" dropped into place on viewers' screens, with the network's "eye" logo appearing at the very far right of the screen, and an announcer proclaiming "CBS presents this program in color"), but most folks saw these in b&w.

I am sure color TV sets were out of reach of most folks in the 1950s because of the $500 price tag at the time. I think most folks who had a TV at all in those days were watching black and white, not getting color until years or decades later (see my comments above). The only time many of these folks ever saw color TV was at a friend's or neighbor's home, and then only for extra-special programs. Add to this the extra cost (and frequency) of service calls on color sets (much more often than b&w) in the 1950s, and it isn't difficult to imagine why color TV did not become popular (i. e. did not "take off") until the 1960s-'70s. NBC may have been the first US television network to broadcast 100-percent color programming, starting in 1966, but I am sure, as I said, most folks didn't see many of those programs in color, on their own sets, for years or decades after that because of the sheer cost of color TV receivers at the time.
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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

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