Bonanza on TV land

[West]

As I recall from working at Burbank, the NBC network was organized so that New York fed a "round-robin" coaxial loop that covered the Eastern and Central time-zones (long before satellites).

Burbank, in the case of film shows, would run a pair (main and protection) of its own prints for the Pacific network. There were many fewer stations in the Mountain time zone, so they were left to delay, I think, the New York feed on their own.

In one of my visits upstairs to telecine, I was shown that the protection prints were sometimes on 16mm film. I don't know whether this would have been true on a major show like Bonanza, however. The main prints were 35mm, of course.

In the case of shows pre-recorded on tape, four original tapes were usually made; two for New York and two for the West. Before high-band recording, the specific tape-machine head-wheel-panel that had recorded each tape was also sent to assure the best playback quality.