What to watch on your early color set!

[jroberts500]

I love all the shows of early television through much of the stuff from the '70's. I intend to buy all I can find as time goes by. There is much I have not ever seen and I often think I could spend hours out of every day just watching old TV shows on my old TV's. Much of the stuff from the '50's and '60's has never been topped. All the newer stuff that is good is always rehashed old stuff. Stars like Dean, Frank, Sammy and many others had amazing personalities and not one of the modern "stars" can come close to giving us what they keep on giving. I am sure that magic comes from thier past. No matter how hard current stars try they cannot overcome the wierd effects of thier over-privelaged, pampered lives. Serves them right! They design there lives to appear as caring so much for thier braindead fans all the while they rake in the bucks for their John Travolta lifestyles which include perks like underground safehouses allowing them a very comfortable place to wait for radiation levels to get back to normal. The rest of us can "fend for ourselves" as we slowly fry. The only people in the media that deserve any amount of respect and support of anykind are those who are trying to educate "we the misinformed people". Much of the entertainment of the '50's and '60's would not simply entertain but also influence and inspire the watcher to think more, become better educated and do the right thing by all other people. Today's programming teaches people to be selfish to every extreme possible. There are exceptions to this but those exceptions are never promoted properly to the masses as doing so would reduce many executive's ability to steal money from thier brothers and sisters. One could say it has always been this way but I am certain it is much worse today than ever before based on much investigation. Much of my information comes from current college students. As much as I see the bad everywhere I also see great possibilities for our future. Things could go either way. Current TV programming should be helping more than it is. That is part of the reason I love old shows! I love "Get Smart", "Gunsmoke", "The Beverly Hillbillies", "The Flip Wilson Show", "The Sonny and Cher Show", "The Dean Martin Show", and many others.
Have a nice day!

[David Roper]

Originally Posted by holmesuser01

1965 seems to be when many shows made the big switch to color. The Wild Wild West on CBS started in 1964, and went color in 1965, as did Petticoat Junction, and The Beverly Hillbillies, and Bewitched, to name a few.

1965 was a transitional year, that's for sure, but a couple of corrections are in order. It would be more accurate to say that the 1965-66 season was one big transition period from B&W to color.
NBC of course had quite a few color offerings at night in the mid sixties, but CBS had done very little color broadcasting up until this time, no doubt still bitter after all those years about the stillbirth of its field-sequential color system. By 1963 ABC had several nighttime series in color every week. At that time CBS had none and was really doing almost no color broadcasting whatsoever outside of the occasional special or "Wizard Of Oz". But just like ABC's formation of a TV network in 1948 prompted CBS to quickly do the same (or be left out in the cold), ABC's plans to expand its color offerings in 1965 caused to CBS pull out the palate, going from 0% weekly color in 1964 to about 50% in 1965, which ended up being a little bit more than ABC did that fall. Paul Henning had lobbied heavily in 1964 for a switch to color for Petticoat Junction's second season, but the network wasn't yet interested. Heck, The Lucy Show had been filming in color since 1963--and CBS still broadcast those episodes in black and white! Little wonder that Petticoat Junction got the nod to go color in 1965 (a whole year after producers were told there was no reason to do so) along with Beverly Hillbillies, but Wild Wild West was not in color that year. 1965 was in fact WWW's first year, and it went to color (along with everything else) in 1966. Bewitched didn't begin color filming until 1966 either. It was on ABC, which had made some odd choices in 1965 as to which shows would go color first. I mean, The Farmer's Daughter and Ozzie & Harriet? That the former was forgettable even then is borne out by its being virtually forgotten today and the latter already had a thirteen year cache of black and white shows in addition to the fact that it was on its last legs. The 1965-66 primetime schedule is something of a patchwork quilt, with a network's offerings on any given night switching back and forth from black and white to color and back again. About the only thing on NBC that that wasn't in color was I Dream Of Jeannie, reportedly because the network had little faith in it.

[Steve Hoffman]

Please note that I DREAM OF JEANNIE delayed the use of color simply because the special effects were already costly in black & white. To film in color would have made that show very expensive for sitcoms at that time. THAT is the reason it was the last to convert to color.

I got this from a TV exec at the time who was "in the know".

[David Roper]

Precisely. An expense not likely to be taken by network execs who didn't expect the show to last....

[Sandy G]

...And today "Jeannie" is one of the best remembered, best-loved shows of that era.-Sandy G.

[oldtvman]

I remember the flinstones, the first abc show in color, wow that was quite a picture, also bonanza and the virginian were great. and any of the live nbc color productions were alwasy spectacular. As I stated in an earlier thread back then if you had a color set you would watch the shows in color no matter what they were

[oldtvman]

Oh, I forgot Saturday night at the movies on NBC brought some of the first full length films to the tri-colored screens

[TVtommy]

Is it me, or did the writing on a lot of shows go south (or slam to s#$t) after the change to color? Anyway, I spend more time these days looking at the socket end of a crt than the pixel end, except of course when immersed in the superior environment of Ak's "Wonderful World of Color Discourse"

[Steve Hoffman]

Originally Posted by TVtommy

Is it me, or did the writing on a lot of shows go south (or slam to s#$t) after the change to color? Anyway, I spend more time these days looking at the socket end of a crt than the pixel end, except of course when immersed in the superior environment of Ak's "Wonderful World of Color Discourse"

Yeah, I think it had to do with lighting the set and much longer it took. They moved the camera less as well.

The Avengers in black and white for example; great shows. The move to color slowed everything down in the show....

Such is life!

[bozey45]

As a teenager in 1957 living in St. Petersburg, Florida I used to visit a school friend had a color tv set. I remember that just about every week "The Red Skelton SHow" was done in color from CBS Television City in Hollywood. the announcer would state that the show was in color but there was no special opening or slide used as I remember at that time. But I remember marveling at the color on the program when i watched it at their house. His show was live of course. Don't know the model set they had, but remember it was RCA though (was only 12 and 13 so not into those model numbers yet.) I'm figuring they probably had a CTC-5 because they had gotten the set about a year previous 1956. As I remember, Skelton's program was the only regular program they telecast in color. I know that most of the time TV Guide didn't even indicate the show was a color telecast.

[jroberts500]

Red Skelton had an art store in the John's Pass shops of Madiera Beach, Florida in the '80's where he sold his paintings. My mother, who is quite younger than Red, met him and told me he was quite a ladies man into his senior years. Actually, she described the meeting with a bit of disappointment about his behavior in terms of being a gentleman.
I bet that show would be great to see. I suspect it is on color videotape. Does anybody know about that show being on tape? I think they were videotaping shows as early as '58 maybe '57.

[Steve Hoffman]

None of that was taped. The earliest is the Astaire thing from 1959. Those shows do not exist in color, maybe a B&W kinnie...

[Eric H]

This Site: http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/
has info on DVD releases of Television shows.
What's on DVD, what's going to be on DVD, voting for what you'd like to be on DVD...

I want them to release the 1955 ZIV production "Highway Patrol" :banana2:
I have 40 episodes on DVDr but the quality is poor.

[bozey45]

can't remember where I saw this but I think Red Skelton's production company was one of the first into color tv in the mid 50's; he had purchased some color equipment I believe (RCA TK-40'S i think) and this may be what CBS was using to do his show; I know Bing Crosby was in on the development of video tape in some capacity; I'll have to try and see where I saw that Skelton information. Anyway, I don't know that his old half hour programs have ever been offered on video but some Canadian stuff he did has been released on video. His 50's show was a hoot. Those into variety shows from the late 50's and early 60's probably know that the Andy Williams Show has been restored from the master tapes and have been aired partially on PBS and may be on video also. The restored color and quality of the tape excerpts I've seen were really outstanding from shows as early as 1960 and 1961. I understand its quite a process to go thru those old 2 inch tapes and do the restoration of the video and color.

[Steve D.]

Here's a good run down on Red Skelton's involvement with color tv in the 60's.

Information courtesy of Ed Reitan's Color Television History site:

Red Skelton Color Studios
"Red-EO-Tape" Studios and Remote Color Vans (1961)
Hollywood, Skelton Studios (former Chaplin Studio) on LaBrea, south of Hollywood Blvd.
Skelton was infatuated with his appearance on color television, cajoled CBS to occasionally colorcast his "Red Skelton Show", and was the first to attempt to market the rental of three remote vans which had full live, film, and color video tape capability. RCA TK-41C and TK-26 cameras with 16mm and 35mm projectors were used with Ampex Color Video Tape Recorders.
Although visionary, the venture was premature and when it failed, CBS bought Skelton Studios as part of renewing Skelton's contract. The mobile color camera vans were sold to KTLA. The Skelton cameras were eventually donated to California State University and later transferred to the UCLA Collection of Television Technology.

And as a follow up, I (Steve D.) was heavily involved, for many years, using these TK-41 cameras while working at KTLA, Los Angeles. The vans consisted of 3 Crown Coaches built on ultra heavy duty bus chassis.

-Steve D.