Quote:
Originally Posted by John Hafer
W.B.,
Interesting about WOR-TV using all RCA. If I am not mistaken, back then was WOR-TV an RKO General station? I know that WNAC-TV ch. 7 in Boston was an RKO General station and they did have GE PE-250 (live) and PE-24/240 (film) color cameras. I had a tour of that station back in the 60s' and saw the studios and film chains. I remember the telecine islands were RCA (TP-7) slide projectors, with TP-15 mutiplexers, but they had replaced their RCA TP-6 16mm projectores with Eastman 285 projectors and all were feeding into the GE color film cameras. Videotape was all Ampex (either VR1200B or VR2000B high-band VTRs' - I can't remember)
As far as other Boston stations, if I recall, WBZ-TV (Westinghouse Broadcasting) had RCA TK-42 and TK-27 cameras, WHDH-TV ch. 5 (first with color) had RCA TK-41 and TK-26 with TK-43 remote cameras for Boston Redsox home games, WNAC-TV with GE equipment (as mentioned above), WSBK-TV ch.38 GE PE-240 color film, (still no live color at the time but later PE-250 live color cameras), and WKBG-TV ch.56 had all RCA with TK-42 and TK-27. Finally, if I remember, I think WGBH-TV ch.2 (Edu) which had RCA TK-60 B&W cameras went with Marconi 4-tube live color cameras. Not not know about their film cameras.
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RKO had a reputation for being notoriously cheap - and I think the fact that WOR-TV didn't switch to GE film chains in '64 may've had to do with their having shown films in color beginning in 1960, when RCA was practically the only game in town, and their TK-26's working just fine and dandy . . . only upgrading their telecine when they moved their studios and prodution facilities.
To be sure, WOR-TV did have GE PE-250 studio cameras. Beginning in 1967, as a replacement for the B&W RCA TK-11's they had from their earliest days in 1949, and for the TK-41 color cameras that since c.1963-64 had been at the studio in the off-(baseball) season and at Shea Stadium when the Mets were playing their then-hapless seasons. (WPIX was another NYC station that had PE-250's, also starting around 1966-67.) *
EDIT: WOR-TV, in late 1967, ordered nine (surprise, surprise) PE-250's - six for use at Shea during Mets games, the other three to their studios for year-round local live color programming. *
Back to Boston: After WHDH-TV was kicked off Channel 5 in 1972 and the then-new WCVB-TV took over, which film chains did the new station use?
And as for the Marconi 4-tube color cameras used by WGBH: Sounds like the Mark VII, in a 'YRGB' arrangement; their subsequent Mark VIII was three-tube, arranged as 'GRB'.