Early Bell Telephone Hour Color Video
 

For those not aware, Classic Arts Showcase is airing excerpts from early color video tapes of The Bell Telephone Hour, shows from 1960-64. They are also posted on YouTube. This was an NBC show of course and cameras TK-41's. Exerpts I've seen are very nice restorations of the color video. A 1960Music Man presentation with the original broadway cast was especially colorful and well done. Some entire shows are available through the distributor also. I think 1960 is the earliest color video tape listed for that particular show. The earliest color video tape I've seen on Classic Arts Showcase was from 1958. They also air excerpts from Producers Showcase done live in color I believe 1954-57, but only B&W kinescopes exist.

I was flipping channels yesterday and happened to catch part of that Music Man number. Colorful indeed, although the colors initially struck me as a little peculiar. It would be interesting to see it again, if it's online.

Phil Nelson

Here's the clip in question:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0vggMCiJfs

There are a bunch of other Telephone Hour clips there; it's the DVD distributor's channel. They've put out a number of discs featuring color "Telephone Hour" clips--mostly clips, unfortunately, rather than complete shows, though they do date back to 1959 in some cases. For some reason, they haven't released any performances by the jazz artists who were on the show, just Broadway/classical/ballet.

You can also find lots of clips on You tube

Hi,

I have no financial ties to this organization whatsoever, but you can purchase DVD transfers of the Bell Telephone Hour - albeit excerpts- from www.vaimusic.com

A genuine treasure trove!

Pallophotophone

So, was that live color to video tape and then a copy to YouTube, or video tape to film and then to YouTube do you know? Just wondering...

Thanks for the post! Led me to a 1965 color TV show with Dinah Shore hosting.
"Harold Arlen an All Star Tribute" on DVD. Found it cheaper on Amazon than Vai website.

My judgement of the video characteristics of the Music Man clip is that there was no film involved; however there was evidently a transfer to helical tape, judging by the flag-waving and color dropouts at the top of the picture. The youtube picture quality is low enough that it's hard to tell if the helical tape was VHS or something more professional.

By the way, that was unfortunate staging, with the set decoration seeming to grow knitting needles (or antennas?) out of her head.

That Strange Object
 

It looks to be a scenic designer's strange idea of a star outside the window maybe or maybe a tree--it is strange to say the least.

I bought the Florence Henderson and Shirley Jones clips disc. This shows a lot about TK-41 cameras:
1) The exposure and color balance in these clips was fine for skin tones, but the dynamic range, especially for lowlights, was poor compared to a current camera.
2) The lowlight shading was all over the place from clip to clip
3) The TK-41 green hair problem due to polarization of back light showed up several times
4) Faint image orthicon ghosting could be seen in some shots
5) Not a lot of noise reduction was done on these shots; the MPEG coding really messed up the nature of the noise; if you still-frame you can see that the background noise is no longer Gaussian, but is a spattering of MPEG artifacts trying to reproduce the noise
6) It was a good thing that home sets were roundies and had too much overscan, because there were image defects in the corners.
7) The edge/corner problems varied greatly from camera to camera; one had strong left side ringing and non-linearity; another had green shading in the corners
8) Sometimes shows went on the air with one camera drifted badly out of registration (one had a red dynamic misregistration that got worse toward the upper left; another had a bad blue misregistration (vertically) that showed blatantly in the middle left of the viewable area.
9) The cameras, once adjusted for best color tracking (matching of channels, registration) seldom made the ultimate level of resolution that a single image orthicon was capable of; this was compensated by rather heavy edge enhancements in these transfers - how much was in the original source is hard to say; comb filtering must have been used in the transfer, as there was no crosscolor except on a diamond-pattern trellis.

I want to repeat that the facial tones were well matched even though the source tapes were from multiple programs over a six-year period. I have seen worse than this, for example in the Dean Martin show DVDs.

Technical comments aside, these are great examples of straight-forward musical productions with a singer on a live mic and backed up by a good orchestra.

The TK-41
 

The website Eyes of a Generation and its Facebook page has numerous TK-40-41 photos and information also showing the cameras in use through the years thanks to contributor photos.

Well, we ARE looking at this from a 2012 perspective...This WAS 50 years ago, they were still "Feeling their way thru" w/color. And the early, 1st generation color videotape machines-Well, an SVHS machine likely would have "Skunked" them in certain aspects. The "quirks" of all this relatively primitive TV technology is sort of what makes it all the more delightful. That it was as GOOD as it was is a testament to the abilities of the guys who actually USED/OPERATED it back when.

Absolutely right - especially the part about the operators -- as has been discussed here before, you can often distinguish Burbank from New York without being told which is which.

How were you able to distinguish Burbank from New York?

As a layperson, I recall that the NY originated shows had the green hair issue also anything black such as a piano had a greenish tinge. Noticed shows from NBC Brooklyn had this issue too. That was my tipoff the show was from NY.

As far as Burbank's production there was a reddish or purpleish tinge to facial tones especially on the Andy Williams and Dean Martin shows.

Always wondered why the big difference.

Thanks

To me, color, registration, etc. seemed less consistently good on the NY cameras. Burbank usually went for the California tan look and achieved it more regularly, but Dean Martin was an exception, sometimes looking very ruddy; although his skin tones were dark, they were often quite reddish. On the DVD collection of his shows, the tint seems to vary from show to show (and sometimes from scene to scene), so I wonder if this was a burst phase problem that was not visible at the first monitoring point and crept in later. This would be an argument for using PAL instead of NTSC.

This reminds me of a Chicago daytime variety program in which the female vocalist looked almost clownish with heavy rouge on her cheeks. One time I went down to the viewing gallery, and imagine my surprise when that's how she looked in person. The NBC rep that was present said they had tried to tell her, but she insisted on doing her own makeup. WNBQ also had a political commentator, Len O'Connor, who had a very ruddy complexion, and they put him in front of a green background! It looked like he refused makeup entirely. The color contrast was unbelievable, but I believe that's the way he really looked.

Thanks old tv nut.

I recall an old tv technician telling me that because of the hectic taping schedule for shows that were being televised from the Rockefeller Center studios particularly the game shows like Jeopardy, that the cameras weren't being properly set up. As more of the shows came on board to color, this became more of an issue.

Fantastic flesh tones, they should have made a solid state Image O.
camera in the 1960s. Maybe the Fernseh IO color was solid state?