The holiday's were special in color!

[oldtvman]

Back in the fifties and sixties as well, it seemed that the Christmas in color seemed to be very special. Even the other networks occassionally threw in a show or two. I remember Mr. Magoo in 1962 in color, along with Andy Williams and others.

[Sandy G]

Oh, yeah-An' "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer", remember ? Burl Ives voiced the Snowman/narrator...NEVER got to watch that in its entirety when I was a kid-they always showed it on Sunday B4 Christmas, & I ALWAYS got drug to some doin's at the church... Scratchy-@ss clothes, Mama on the warpath, church was always hotter'n' a depot stove-It WAS Christmas, after all, the heat's SPOSED to be on-Nevermind that it's 55-60 outside...If Church wasn't such a rather dreadful memory for me, I'd prolly wanna go more now...

[Electrohome]

To the Christmas TV special buffs here-I got a 12/20/62 Andy Williams Show IN COLOR-it's the 1962 Christmas show w/all original commercials and even the NBC Peacock as well is with it as well. Merry Christmas from 1962 in glorious COLOR HO HO HO and Happy Holidays from Derek

[bozey45]

And we must not forget "Sing Along with Mitch" Christmas shows on NBC in Living Color. Also the special Bing Crosby Hollywood Palace Christmas specials on ABC. You can catch some of the Crosby and Andy Williams stuff on PBS this time of year on those 'pledge drives.' Some of their material has been restored and looks spectacular.

[John Hafer]

Electrohome, how and where did you get a copy of the 1962 Andy Williams Christmas Show from 1962? This sure must be a treasure to have!

To add my 2 cents, I remember back in Christmas of 1963 when we just got our first 21" roundy color television and then watching the Red Skelton Christmas Show in color on CBS. It was even more special because back then, CBS was not broadcasting regular weekly shows in color and it was cool watching a color show on a different channel than the NBC channel.

I miss those days of early color television when it was so special. We even invited over neighbors to watch color shows with us.

[Sandy G]

Yeah, remember The NBC Peacock ? "The following program is brought to you in Living Color, on NBC..." Can't exactly remember what CBS had-Think it was just "CBS Color" or something. Guess they were still sore at Sarnoff/RCA over his & NBC's color system being picked over theirs'...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Yeah, remember The NBC Peacock ? "The following program is brought to you in Living Color, on NBC..." Can't exactly remember what CBS had-Think it was just "CBS Color" or something. Guess they were still sore at Sarnoff/RCA over his & NBC's color system being picked over theirs'...

CBS's answer to NBC's peacock was to have the letters "CBS", each letter a different primary color, drop down to the center of the TV screen, followed at the extreme right-hand side by the CBS "eye" logo. There were three tones, one for each letter (but not the same G-E-C NBC used), followed by the announcer's voice: "CBS presents this program in color!"

BTW, NBC had a downright cute network ID for the Christmas season a couple of years ago; it was the small NBC peacock, in color, with a Santa Claus cap on top! I think I may still have a VHS tape of an NBC show having that logo in the lower left corner of the screen.

[Electrohome]

I got that copy of the 12/20/62 Andy Williams show from a collector in New Jersey who's a collector of Andy Williams shows. It's a very beautiful and awesome show Oh, silly, NBC inserted B&W commercials into the breaks though-Oh
Now, on to the CBS Color ID, it went like this-
bing C, bing B, Bing S, CBS Presents This Program In Color and was used from September, 1965 to the end of August, 1968.
The ABC Color ID was only used from September, 1965 to the end of August, 1966. However, ABC had In Color built into the opening credits of it's shows and as a slide before it's show until summer, 1971 I believe.
The NBC Peacock was first a slide introduced in September of 1956, then the 1st animated NBC Peacock appeared September, 1957 on Your Hit Parade the the last NBC Peack in 2 variations appeared September, 1962 on Laramie and was used until August, 1975 on The Tonight Show w/Johnny Carson.
There's your history of the In Color IDs of the big 3

[Joel Cairo]

Here's a nice example of holiday TV:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgQuph24hP4

Did everyone guess the right person?

-Kevin

(Check out some of the other videos posted by that user...!)

[bozey45]

Go to http://www.big13.net for the NBC peacock stuff. Just scroll down until you get to it; other interesting stuff there also.

[John Hafer]

Last night I watched the best of the Andy Williams Christmas Shows on PBS. It was fun watching it for many of the scenes were taken from the mid-60's shows when NBC was still using RCA TK-41 cameras. I could tell which scenes were from TK-41s and which newer scenes were probably from RCA TK-44Bs or newer cameras. Boy, I miss those days of early color television!

[zenith2134]

since i was born a bit later and color was kind of standardized in the late eighties the only Christmas movie I remember as NOT being in color was the classic "It's a Wonderful Life"

but as a kid my dad taught me to appreciate the subtleties that a b/w film can convey since it relies on the viewer's imagination more

[Dan Starnes]

My family didnt get a color tv till 1972. I imagine those specials were really something to see in color.

[ChrisW6ATV]

No color in my house until my brother bought a new 19" Sony Trinitron in 1977. The first show we watched (right after I helped him bring the TV up the stairs to our third-floor apartment) was "Family Feud".

[classicradios]

I just watched Tennessee Ernie "The Story of Christmas" on the roundie. NBC aired the program December 22, 1963 in color. Perfect for my 1963 Zenith colr set! Quality is not very good, About the quality of a EP VHS.
This weekend I'll run "Happy Holidays with Bing and Frank" and "Frosty the Snowman" for my boys as they prefer to watch Frosty on the roundie rather than the LCD TV.