First Color Shows "PASSWORD"

[aerials]

Watching the taping of the cavett show in 1970 in NYC, i was in love with the GE pe250 cameras. They rolled across the stage with ease and the camera design was functional and simple. I do remember Regis Philbin the co-host and Jim croche sang his new hit songs. back in chicago Wbkb later to be Wls tv used Ge cameras as well as Wttw. Can someone please let us know what cameras were used for Dark Shadows. I think it was Ge. but may be incorrect. thanks Hey more great cameras at Eyes of a generation.com

[colortrakker]

If Dark Shadows taped their color seasons in NY, they were most likely GE. If they taped in LA, which I think they did, they were probably Norelcos.

ABC used GE cameras in their NY studios for quite a while - until at least the late '70s, I think. Meanwhile, in LA, ABC used Norelcos until the mid '70s when they switched to Ikegami cameras.

[SDA SRS 1.2]

Originally Posted by colortrakker

If Dark Shadows taped their color seasons in NY, they were most likely GE. If they taped in LA, which I think they did, they were probably Norelcos.

ABC used GE cameras in their NY studios for quite a while - until at least the late '70s, I think. Meanwhile, in LA, ABC used Norelcos until the mid '70s when they switched to Ikegami cameras.

Dark Shadows ('66-'71) taped at ABC Studio 16 at 433 W. 53rd St. in NYC. Behind the scenes photos show Norelco cameras.

[W.B.]

Originally Posted by SDA SRS 1.2

Dark Shadows ('66-'71) taped at ABC Studio 16 at 433 W. 53rd St. in NYC. Behind the scenes photos show Norelco cameras.

Those were PC-60's all right. The small Norelco logo in black on the (possibly stainless steel) belt on the right and left sides of the camera body tell the tale. Early PC-70's also had what Chuck Pharis called the "round applied edges," but the "belt" was darker and had a larger Norelco logo plate, as later production model PC-70's with the "square molded edges" had. ABC's 66th Street studios used PC-70's (as I saw from behind-the-scenes pictures of WABC's Eyewitness News in the '70's).

The 58th Street TV-15 studio, for many years, had General Electric PE-350's, used throughout Dick Cavett's run, as well as on The $10,000 / $20,000 Pyramid. Apparently the picture from the PE-350's wasn't half bad, as this model was used throughout Pyramid's ABC run.

In Hollywood, the only studio I could tell to use PE-250's was 1313 North Vine Street (to quote Ed Reitan, the PE-250's at that studio "never worked properly"), while the ABC Television Center at Prospect and Talmadge had Norelco PC-60's and -70's. It was on Vine Street that Joey Bishop's ill-fated talk show was based.

Now, would anyone know which of their studios and facilities used which film chains? I read somewhere that Prospect & Talmadge had RCA TK-26 film chains, dating back to the early '60's, while New York studios would have had GE PE-24's. Or is that part of the story?

Meanwhile, CBS did use GE's - in their telecine suites, on both coasts. 4-V PE-24's, and possibly some PE-240's (if purchased after 1966).

The only other color camera CBS used in the latter half of the '60's, besides Norelco PC-60's and -70's, was the Marconi Mark VII - and there, on a very limited basis, evidently for a short time. Pictures of this camera as used by CBS can be found here, and here.

(In some instances in the mid-to-late 1960's, what cameras local CBS O&O's used varied wildly. KNXT, now KCBS, in Los Angeles used Mark VII's while WCAU in Philadelphia used the "hated" RCA TK-42's - hated not only in terms of longtime rival RCA, but also the cameras themselves.)