The problem with collecting TV's...

[Jeffhs]

Where did you find that screen image? NBC does not use the full-size peacock any longer, having retired it in 1975; however, they still use a much smaller peacock (with the NBC chimes) these days, which it shows just before its color programs in prime time. The small peacock, often in bland, drab black and white (!), is also shown after the network's promotions for the next show and before it goes to the local stations.

The NBC "snake" was also retired in 1975. I have many very fond memories of NBC's original peacock which was shown just before color programs on the network, with an announcer saying "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC."

The NBC television station in Cleveland was owned by NBC from 1948 to 1955 and again from 1965 to 1990. (The station is now owned by Tegna, which has succeeded in running it into the ground, but that's another story.) I mention this because NBC also had regional announcements for local color programs, based on the network's own announcement. There were different versions for each city in which NBC owned a station. In Cleveland, the announcement was "The following program is brought to you in living color (over) WKYC-TV."


BTW, where did Chicago's NBC television station ever get the idea it is "the world's first full color TV station"? I'm sure other TV stations were broadcasting in color long before 1966, the year NBC-TV became the first so-called "full color" television network in the US. Also, I would think New York's WNBC-TV, being NBC's first TV station, should have been the station to take this honor. I don't think Chicago's NBC affiliate signed on the air until some time in the late 1940s-early 1950s, as there were very few, if any, commercial TV stations in the United States before 1947. Cleveland, for example, did not get its first television station until 1947; it was on channel 5 and was originally affiliated with CBS (it is now an ABC affiliate). In '48, channel 3 signed on as an NBC affiliate, and the following year, channel 8 signed on. (The grade-ZZZ UHF stations in Cleveland did not arrive until the mid-'60s through the mid-'80s, with one such station, channel 19, taking the CBS affiliation from channel 8 in the early nineties; from 1986 until about 1994 or so, 19 was an affiliate of that poor excuse for a TV network called FOX.) I believe channel 8 was an independent station at the time (1949), as the ABC television network did not exist until the late '50s or even early sixties.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Where did you find that screen image? ...


BTW, where did Chicago's NBC television station ever get the idea it is "the world's first full color TV station"? ...

I don't recall where I found that jpg of the Chicago peacock, but I definitely have it saved for use on the media player.
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See jr_tech's link to the WMAQ story.

By "full color" they meant all new locally produced material. Of course, they still had some monochrome shows on from the network and some old movies in B&W. But if it came from their studios, it was in color.

It's very hard to find material referencing Tommy Tint. Also, I have seen only one ebay listing, years back, for one of the multicolored desk phones that Illinois Bell/Western Electric made for their offices by assembling parts from several differently colored phone cases. I lost the bid.
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As a side note, I have often marvelled at how little control NBC kept over the color in various representations of the peacock. Every promotional item is different, most matching the general hues (and some not), but all differing in brightness, saturation, and exact hue. The form was all they really standardized. Even the on-air lead-ins, which were intended to have standard colors, were often distorted by excess contrast and color shifts from multi-generation copying.