You want "Early Color"??? This is about as Early as it gets...

[bozey45]

On a website with a rather extensive episode guide for his program it is mentioned that in 1950 CBS commissioned Autry to film 2 of his TV show episodes in color to be used at a demonstration for their color system as to how a filmed program would look. So he filmed two episodes in color in 1950: "The Raiders" and "Double-Barreled Vengeance." These aired on his series in April of 1951. His series airs on Encore Westerns. The first time I saw his series on Encore I wondered why two color episodes popped up in the middle of season #1. I thought they were maybe airing out of order because his final season 1955-56 was done all in color, but when I noticed the copyright dates were 1950 i knew that they must have been done in color for some reason and recently found out that the CBS color demo was that reason.