DuMont "Electronicam" Logo

[M3-SRT8]

Anybody here have a close up of the famous "DuMont Electronicam" logo that used to grace their cameras, or was shown at the end credits of their TV Shows?

I want a jpg file for a scan to screen it on a tee shirt.

Thanks;

LJB

[cbenham]

Have you seen this site?
http://www.pharis-video.com/p4589.htm

[Jeffhs]

I always wondered how old TV series such as DuMont's The Honeymooners were captured on film for broadcast in the days before video tape. Now I know. I didn't realize the DuMont "Electronicam" was such a huge monster! Now I know that as well, and will think of it whenever I watch my old VHS videotapes of DuMont's The Honeymooners, which I taped from a Cleveland UHF station (was WCLQ-TV, now WQHS Univision channel 61) in 1982, not to mention when these old films are shown on WGN America on weekends.

BTW: I remember one episode of The Honeymooners that cracked me up the first time I saw it on channel 61, as it has ever since when I see it on my tapes and in reruns on WGN America--it's the one where Ralph Kramden and his friend Ed Norton were trying to figure out where Kramden went wrong on his income tax. He was trying to itemize his deductions when he said (these are his exact words, captured forever on film by the DuMont Electronicam), "...Then there was that prize I won for being high scorer on the pinball machine, the horse with the stomach in its clock---er, the clock in its stomach..." I always break up laughing when I see that part of the episode, not that the rest of it wasn't just as funny. Just goes to show that they did goof from time to time in early television, only in those days there was no easy way to back up and edit out the mistakes before the show went on the air. Live TV was and is worse. If you made a mistake or a gaffe on live television, there was no way to take it back--it went out on the air for the TV station's entire viewership to see and hear, and if it were a network show, your flub was seen coast-to-coast. By the time I was old enough to care about it (mid-1960s; I was born in 1956), TV stations were using videotape and had begun color telecasting (NBC was the first "all color" TV network). One other live-TV mistake I remember was about 25 years ago, during a local newscast on the Cleveland NBC affiliate. The anchor was describing a news story from NASA. His commentary went something like this: ". . . the story today from Nassau ... er, NASA . . ." That was one of the few times in my entire life (52.5 years)--it may be the only time--I have ever heard a local TV news anchor make such a mistake.

I have yet to hear a national anchorperson make a gaffe like that, though. I guess by the time a TV personality makes it to the network level, he or she has learned a few things about being on live television, one of the most important of which is not to goof on the air. I remember newscasts as far back as the last few years of The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC in the sixties and seventies, and cannot ever remember either Huntley or Brinkley making a mistake or mispronouncing words, etc. on the air. Cronkite on CBS and whomever did the weeknight national news on ABC were just as good. That's more than I can say, unfortunately, for today's TV news anchors and production teams, who work under tremendous pressure to meet deadlines; this, more often than not, results in mistakes being made, some of which get on the air. I remember one 6 p.m. newscast on the NBC station in Cleveland a few months ago, in which a national story from the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, Illinois was being reported. The reporter doing the story pronounced the name of the city correctly, but the city's name on the screens of all Cleveland TV sets tuned to WKYC-TV was spelled--I'm not kidding, as I saw this bigger than life on the newscast--"Boilingbrook" Illinois. This seems to be a recurring problem on channel 3 for some reason. I wonder if they hire reporters and even technical people who cannot spell off the streets, or....? I've been watching Channel 3 News as long as I can remember; the errors I've seen on their newscasts haven't been monumental (yet), but they are an embarrassment to the station's management and, ultimately, to the Greater Cleveland area as a whole. Cleveland has been maligned and, yes, laughed at out loud by out-of-town visitors for over four decades as it is; why make it worse by having a local television station (an affiliate of a major network at that) whose news anchors cannot spell or pronounce words or names of cities, etc. correctly? I often think this is why NBC sold WKYC-TV back in 1990, although it promptly bought Columbus, Ohio's NBC station almost immediately thereafter, only to sell that station just a year or two later. However, my point is that NBC probably sold channel 3 in Cleveland because the station was losing money for the network and may have been coming close to making a national laughingstock of the network--the same as the city of Cleveland was made the butt of a national joke from 1969 (when the Cuyahoga River burned) until the present time; yes, the city still has the dickens of an image problem, and WKYC-TV isn't helping matters by having news reporters and anchors who cannot spell, have horrible-sounding speaking voices in some cases and who even look like crags in some instances. I mention the last because of an anchor on channel 3 local news (there has been a huge shakeup in the station's anchor teams at six and eleven o'clock since the first of the year, when an anchor who had been with the station ten years was let go) who does, in my opinion, look as if he does not belong on television. I know times are tough, the US economy is in shambles, but for crying out loud...doesn't Cleveland have enough problems without the added embarrassment of a local TV station that doesn't seem to care what goes out on the air (and whose monkey business is seen three times daily in 17 counties throughout northeastern Ohio) during its newscasts? No wonder channel 3 is always third or worse in the ratings. The only Cleveland station with a worse newscast, IMO, is the CBS affiliate on channel 19, whose 6 and eleven p.m. newscasts look like a three-ring circus, again in my opinion. Please, don't even get me started on channel 5. Their news is not bad, but it could stand a lot of improvement.

Sheeesh!

[cbenham]

Or the time in the mid 1950s the network announcer said, "This is the NB--CBS TELEVISION NETWORK" at the end of 'Bigtop' one Saturday morning.

[Sam Cogley]

On a local level...the town where I went to grad school has an NBC affiliate that's owned by the university and is partially staffed by j-school students. One memorable night, they sent a foreign student with a very thick accent out for a remote broadcast...

First off, the student wasn't a great broadcaster (at least, not yet) to begin with, so she (I think it was a woman, but I don't remember for sure) was messing up a lot. This isn't too abnormal for that station. What really caused chaos was that between the flubs and her accent, it was quite literally impossible to understand what was being said - and this was one of those typical "pointless" remotes, where you just have someone bathed in light standing outside in the dark.

Realizing that this was all falling apart, the production crew cut away from the remote and went back to the studio...but didn't warn the anchors. One of them was laughing so hard that she had her head in her arms on the desk so you couldn't see her busting up. It was easily the funniest thing I've ever seen on a news broadcast.

[Reece]

One time years ago, maybe in the 70's? the late Hughes Rudd on CBS radio was giving the news, and said "CBS Radio Net(BELCH)work," and immediately said, I'm so sorry, so sorry. Then he continued to give the news, every now and then saying he was so sorry. After the news was over, they cut back to the local station and the announcers there were cracking up, said ol' Hughes must have et something in the CBS Cafeteria that didn't agree with him....

Reece

[Sandy G]

Well, if Uncle Walter or Chet or David ever DID make a flub, who would have the temerity to bring it up ? Those guys were kinda like the Voice of God Incarnate back then...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by cbenham

Or the time in the mid 1950s the network announcer said, "This is the NB--CBS TELEVISION NETWORK" at the end of 'Bigtop' one Saturday morning.

There was another goof on the NBC television network (then owned by RCA) that has stuck in my memory for well over 35 years. The local affiliate in Cleveland was going from a commercial (following a local show, IIRC) to the NBC network feed; the engineer cut to the feed about 15 seconds too soon, and northern Ohio viewers of WKYC-TV in Cleveland, myself included, found themselves looking at the station break for WNBC-TV in New York! The station had a unique ID at the time, with the NBC "snake" logo inside the number 4.

I also read of one incident in the 1930s in which a network radio announcer, at the breaking point after a particularly trying childrens' program, turned to his engineer and sighed, "That ought to keep them little b----s (expletive deleted) quiet for awhile." Unbeknownst to the announcer, the studio microphone was still live, and his remark immediately went out over the network, coast-to-coast. The news story describing this incident ended (in paraphrase) with the words "...The children's hour (on network radio) was never quite the same (after that)." I wonder if the announcer involved was fired.

[nasadowsk]

There's a lot of youtube clips of news channels, especially cable, flubbing stuff. Naturally, you can guess which kind of flubs make it online, so I won't mention them here (they're NOT safe for work!)

[M3-SRT8]

Originally Posted by cbenham

Have you seen this site?
http://www.pharis-video.com/p4589.htm

Yes. No Logo.

At least, no logo large or clear enough to save to a file to enlarge, etc to make a tee-shirt screen out of.

LJB

[M3-SRT8]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

There was another goof on the NBC television network (then owned by RCA) that has stuck in my memory for well over 35 years. The local affiliate in Cleveland was going from a commercial (following a local show, IIRC) to the NBC network feed; the engineer cut to the feed about 15 seconds too soon, and northern Ohio viewers of WKYC-TV in Cleveland, myself included, found themselves looking at the station break for WNBC-TV in New York! The station had a unique ID at the time, with the NBC "snake" logo inside the number 4.

I also read of one incident in the 1930s in which a network radio announcer, at the breaking point after a particularly trying childrens' program, turned to his engineer and sighed, "That ought to keep them little b----s (expletive deleted) quiet for awhile." Unbeknownst to the announcer, the studio microphone was still live, and his remark immediately went out over the network, coast-to-coast. The news story describing this incident ended (in paraphrase) with the words "...The children's hour (on network radio) was never quite the same (after that)." I wonder if the announcer involved was fired.

That was "Uncle Don."

"This is your Uncle Don saying Good Night...Goooood Niiiiight !"

"....we're off...?"

"Good! That oughta hold the little B@#$%^&s."

LJB

[M3-SRT8]

Oh, and one of the funniest "Honeymooners" episodes is the one where Ralph is listing all his 'strong points' and 'weak points' whilst Ed is blowing a calvary charge from a coronet into Ralph's ear.

The timing of that sequence is perfect. Hilarious.

LJB

[Arkay]

I've done a couple of live broadcasts. Once, I goofed the very beginning words, but they immediately cut it and quickly told me that "live" meant a 12-second delay, so start again in 2, 1, "NOW!" ... I did and it went out okay. Dodged a bullet, so to speak!

That isn't always the case, though, even today: I did the countdown to midnight on New Year's Eve, once... NO delay on that; everyone's clock was on the same time! Fortunately, that went fine.

There are some really funny bloopers and unexpected events from newscasts around the world, posted on YouTube. Just search "bloopers" and similar words, and you'll find some.

[old_tv_nut]

One time many years ago, the local NBC O&O TV station in Chicago was broadcasting the correct video, but the audio was an open mic somewhere in the technical facility, where two techs were conversing while they worked. Fortunately for them, there was nothing forbidden being said, just boring chat like "now I've got to fix this...". It went on for several minutes. Then there was the sound of a phone ringing, and: "Hello? [pause] ... OH!" -then CLICK! no more audio, followed soon by the correct feed.

I didn't know the abbreviation "LMAO" then, but that's what I was doing.

[Sandy G]

Wasn't there a "DuMont Electronicam" logo on the closing credits of "The Honeymooners"?