A RCA TK-15 camera in Australia still survives

[Aussie Bloke]

G'day all.

Just been viewing this video of 50th anniversary of TNT-9 Launceston Tasmania (now Southern Cross Television):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S6yg9HYa_o
And in the video about 55 seconds in I saw one of their original RCA TK-15 vidicon cameras nicely preserved sitting on its original dolly!!! It is very nice to know one of these cameras still survive as they are rarer than rocking horse shit even in the USA, according to Chuck Pharis's page http://www.pharis-video.com/p5303.htm not many of these cameras were made! Whilst these cameras were primarily for industrial applications and low budget broadcast stations, a few stations in Australia purchased these cameras in the early 60s, TNT-9 Launceston TAS had 2 of them and as seen in the video one survives in good condition, NBN Newcastle NSW had at least one and my local station WIN-4 Wollongong had two of them in their studios, all three stations opened in 1962.

Anyways thought I'd share this with you's.

Cheers
Troy

[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.

[W.B.]

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.

[old_tv_nut]

Let me clarify - I did not see the vidicon chains themselves, but I sure could recognize the output due to vidicon lag. Very abstract when the shot was a railroad train at night, with a trail of multiple decaying headlight images as the train roared by.

Regarding use of vidicon studio cameras, of course public access studios for cable systems used them (though I'd guess different models) - but I meant to ask if any broadcast stations did.

[W.B.]

Probably the absolute smallest markets or medium-market stations whose owners were cheapskates.