Looking for NBC peacock video
 

I have been searching without success for quality video of the various NBC peacock video clips that were used as intros before color programs that were broadcast on NBC over the decades.

All that I have been able to find thus far are the crapy compressed ones that appear on Youtube.

I would like to be able to get the various versions of the NBC peacock so that I can place them on a dvd and have the DVD loop continuously as a demo for my restored RCA color sets.

Obviously I have no desire to use the logos for anything but my own personal use, and there is no intent to use them to profit monetarily, so I would assume that there should be no copyright issues.

IS there anyone out there that could help me to obtain what I am searching for?

I did drop an email to one fellow who has a web site but he never answered me back.

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to give

Bob G.

Good luck! Not only have recordings and films deteriorated over the years, but NBC was incredibly sloppy about any standards for the color consistency of the peacock. I have seen actual film copies that apparently were intended for use on the air that had horrendous exposure, contrast, and color problems. Of course, they were also faded towards pink due to age, but you could tell that they were't good originally. You can see this in some of the videos on the web - the green is practically gray, yellow turning orange or overexposed, and the white part totally burned out while other colors are excessively dark. Every published version in magazines, on other advertising items, even the NBC Peacock board game, had a different version of the colors. It is much easier to make a collection of "all the many (bad) versions of the peacock" than to find even one definitive good copy.
This will give you an idea of what it should look like:
http://www.big13.net/NBC%20Peacock/NBCPeacock1.htm
I have NEVER seen it look like this anywhere else.

If you do find good ones, I'd be happy to go in on the cost of acquisition and cover material costs for a non-profit copy.

I followed a couple of links and found this..

http://www.kingoftheroad.net/colorTV/peacock1.html

I saved it as an AVI file :D

I am aware of kingoftheroad site. That does not help. You can not take a highly compressed video stream from the net and display it on a 21" color tv. There is no where near enough information in that compressed video to display a decent picture on a 21" crt.

I am looking for raw NTSC video.

Thanks for the suggestion anyhow.

Bob G.

Yes I understand I just happened across that link and thought it was kind of cool... no good for quality NTSC video though.

Just a long shot, but you might start looking around and asking around about old VHS tapes that people taped off-the-air. If you're lucky, someone will have taped off a show that included the peacock and the tape of which is still in decent condition. Tricky and/or time-consuming to find, perhaps, but I'm SURE there must be a bunch of them out there, and they should be cheap to buy. Of course, you might have to spend a bit getting a bunch of unwanted ones before you found a good one, and you might have to spend a lot of time playing through them (even on FF) before you find the peacock, but it's a possible way to find one. Since NBC was one of the three big networks for many years, and the peacock came on fairly often for a good number of those years, I think the chances of getting one that way might be worth the effort, if your heart is set on finding this video.

I have a bunch of old VHS tapes, but unfortunately, all of them were made here in Hong Kong, and our channels, not belonging to NBC, almost never showed the peacock, so I don't think I have one.

Just another idea: Did NBC put the peacock before any movies or shows that were put on LaserDisc or DVD? I know I have a bunch of movies that show the MGM lion in the beginning, as that was the movie company. I can't recall one that had the peacock, but there might be some out there, in those formats, with some of the TV shows that have been released that way?

I'm sure one will "materialize" for you. Good luck!

I think it's on one of those Johnny Carson Best of Videos.

Well, as a tiny compromise, I have this as one of my wallpapers....:D

I just thought of something! Check out any of the Laugh-In shows on DVD--they have the bird in the beginning.

I think they were reissued about five years ago by Guthy-Renker.

As you can see, the peacock is my forum avatar :D

A favorite topic as my avatar will show.

The Laramie peacock is on any number of DVDs as previous posters have mentioned: the 1968 Petula Clark special, "Movin' with Nancy" (Sinatra), Hullabaloo, The Andy Williams Show. The original peacock is tougher. It's on the Howdy Doody DVD of the last episode (Clarabell Speaks) but with Howdy Doody music rather than the fanfare. You can also find it on the DVDs of the Tennessee Ernie Ford show put out by his estate (which also have all the bumpers, etc.--great early color stuff) but also without the fanfare. The Ford shows and Petula Clark have been put out on VHS as well.

Another possibility--when NBC was rerunning the Mary Martin Peter Pan in the 1980s it had the original peacock at the front. I have a VHS of that around here somewhere.

As for the quality of it--I've seen enough of these to agree that the quality was very uneven; no two seem to look alike. But if the point is to re-create the original broadcast experience, isn't that part of it?

On a related note--the Universal HD channel is rerunning Hogan's Heroes (annoyingly remastered to 16:9). Many of the episodes start with the CBS color logo.

I worked for Guthy Renker back in the day. I did real time copies of the 1" originals to VHS. They had the bird.

A few years ago I acquired a Guthy-Renker DVD of the October 7, 1968 Laugh-In marked LGDVD001. Screen cap of the bird attached. [apparently not; seems i've maxed out at 3.3 Meg of pix upload; they're kidding, right!]


The consensus is that it was shot with RCA TK-41 cameras.

Can you comment on the color accuracy of the DVD? My interest is in early color programming that can be used as accurate source material for demonstrating the CT-100.


Pete

I am having the same issue with photos Pete. I just started a Photobucket account. You can upload the photos to Photobucket FREE and then cut and paste the link they provide you into your AK posts and they will automatically upload from the photobucket site when someone loads your AK post.

I think the small space AK provides for photos is rather silly. You have to delete the photos from older posts in order to have photos in your recent posts. So when someone looks at an older post that had photos for a demo on how to build something, the photos are no longer there???? Thst is pretty goofy if you ask me.

Bob G.

I hope holmesuser01 can comment based on memory. I think the only other reference would be to any photographs of the set. The only natural color in that program was the talent's faces -everything else is unknown costume and "psychedelic" sets.

Regarding the peacock on these DVDs, its color is lousy but typical of the peacock film clip, apparently. The red and orange are practically identical, the yellow is very orange, and the green is has been turned into a very desaturated and dark cyan.

The video quality itself is decent, no visible tape banding or other defects.

Does this help? BTW, thanks for the memories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GohWSsFCkw

I've got some old tapes and DVDs that SHOULD have the peacock. I will go through them over the next few days and try to put together something.

Since they are compilations I'm not sure what tapes had the NBC programs. Please email me at [email protected] in a few days in case I forget. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZPXT...eature=related

Must have been for the broadcast of The Wizard of Oz.

It's for NBC's 1965 fall preview special which starts in black & white because it's hosted by Don Adams and begins with a scene from Get Smart's black & white pilot.

In those days, CBS broadcast The Wizard of Oz, not NBC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6C-R...eature=related

Would be interesting to know what VO CBS used re: the opening b/w sequence.

Man, do I ever remember that last CBS link--cool!

Bob,

I understand completely you wanting to demo your sets using the NBC peacock with fanfare. Although when your CT-100 and 21CT55 were new, NBC was using a static color chimes (xylophone) slide as their color logo:
http://www.big13.net/NBC%20Peacock/C...C%20Chimes.jpg


-Steve D.

I didn't know that Steve. Thanks for the tidbit.

I wonder if there is any color film of that floating around somewhere in the NBC archives. On second thought, I bet if I could get a high quality jpeg of that I could use my video editing software on my computer to turn it into a full screen mpeg video for dvd. That should be an easy one. I could even do it with other still of the peacock and do fades from one slide to another. I guess that is an option if I dont find the videos of the peacock.

Bob

About 8 years ago, someone was selling 35mm Peacock optical sound leaders on film cores (the little yellow things) at our favorite site. I bought one and it was almost devoid of green dye. Blue was just behind.

I think I gave it to a friend of mine from NBC who had won a national Emmy for camera coverage as part of a gag gift.

If anyone has a telecine and good correction software, I can get it back and submit it for trial. And maybe someone else bought one. She had a bunch for sale. I tried to buy a second one but got burned and she vanished.

Dave A

I bought one, and the color was as you said. I believe it is truly unrecoverable. I tried various scanner software, some of which does an unbelievably good job of restoring faded pink film, but it would not work on this. Also tried a bunch of manual manipulation in Photoshop, with matrix calculations and the works. The problem is not only the fading, but the fact that the film is an Nth generation copy that originally had all the color errors you see, making the red and orange the same, the yellow orangish, the green dark and cyanish, etc. So, the restoration tends to restore those badly copied colors if it does anything.

I found one for Bob and will be sending it on its way to Wisconsin tomorrow. It was much harder to locate than I thought it would be and I have more than 200 hours of original programming from the 50s and 60s. My first thought was the '69 Super Bowl but unfortunately it's only got like the last 1/3 of the sound leader. Then I tried a '64 NBC promo tape and lots of cool stuff but no Peacock. Finally found a 1965 episode of the network run of Get Smart that had it.

Interestingly, I've got a bunch of old network tapes of shows run in color that were recoded at the network in B&W. Wonder why they would do that?? Anyway glad to help out. People on this board have been very helpful to me. :D

NTSC always meant "Never the same color twice"!!!!

Fred

Just wanted to let everyone know that Ian sent me a very nice peacock the he found and I will be using it when I get around to developing a DVD of NBC color intors.

Thanks much Ian!

Bob

No problem Bob. Anyone else needs one just let me know... :D

Like anything else, they did it to save money - it was cheaper to make a kinescope or videotape in B&W back then. The networks regularly taped live programming from New York to be played later on the West Coast - I'd have to talk to a friend of mine who has done extensive research into this stuff to see if it was regularly done with any color programming.

I have a lot of old programming like that too. One show in particular is Ozzie & Harriet. The final season of that show (1965-1966) was the only one shot in color. When episodes turn up of that season, they are usualy b&w. The only color episodes that show up are about 4 that were released by Shout Factory. They are the only DVD's authorized by the Nelson family and they have been edited for syndication. These edited version were done in the 80's when Harriet Nelson hosted the show on The Disney Channel. The colors are washed out and need to be restored.

I have heard that some network affiliates couldn't brodcast color and were given b&w copies of shows. I have also heard that copies were made like that to ship over seas during the war for soldiers to watch. A lot of live shows were filmed in kinescopes (which is horrible). This was done by pointing a camera towards a monitor and filming it off there. A lot of shows only survive in this format. American Bandstand and Shindig are prime examples of this. A lot of daytime shows were not saved back then and were thrown out or the tape re-used. Soap Opera fans complain that a lot of early footage from long running shows no longer survive. I think I read Young and The Restless that started in the early 70's is one of the few that saved their footage.

Believe it. TK-41's continued to be used at NBC's New York and Burbank studios up to around mid-1969 when TK-44A's were broken in.

In the August 1969 edition of Broadcast Engineering, in an article about TV coverage of the moon landing, there was a picture of an NBC crew using a Norelco PC-70 camera, with "NBC Color," the NBC snake in a box - and the Norelco logo taken out, not unlike what CBS had done with RCA TK-10/30 and TK-11/31 cameras way back when.

Pete, The DVD line was totally different from our side of the plant.

I was rarely over there.

As well as the ABC afternoon soap "Dark Shadows" from 1966-71, although some of the 1,225 episodes survive only in B/W kinescope form.