Happy 60th Anniversary Color TV

[TV_on_the_Porch]

On this date in 1953 the FCC approved the NTSC color standard. Although NBC broadcast the first color image at 5:31PM--a still of the NBC chimes--CBS beat them to air with an actual color program at 6:15. NBC's first color show began at 6:30.

[LUNCH]

I consider color the last TRUE improvement in picture quality.And it's amazing it was introduced 60 years ago.

[installLSC]

It's amazing how long it took color to get off the ground. As late as 1964 only 3% of households had it, and it wasn't till 1972 that most households have one. Heck my family didn't get their first until 1985!

[treky]

my family didn't get our first color TV until 1973-and it was a used one then it broke down after a few years, and we didn't get another one until 1980.

[Jedew]

It was a big revolution, At that time things which seem impossible are now easily possible and available.

[Yong Fang]

So if they had the technology to do color, why wasn't there any color TV shows until around 1965 or so?

Also, why have color, when no one had a color television? Seemed rather pointless. What's was the technology that allowed color programming to be mass produced by the mid 1960's. Probably stems from the television sets at the time. There was color, but the TVs could not duplicate it.

Which also points to this question, what came first, people having televisions or television broadcasting? As in, why would anyone have a TV without the broadcasters, and why would anyone broadcast when no one had televisions?
Actually, there were TV broadcasts in the 1930s, but no one had TVs.

History like this fascinates me.

[treky]

Originally Posted by Yong Fang

So if they had the technology to do color, why wasn't there any color TV shows until around 1965 or so?

Also, why have color, when no one had a color television? Seemed rather pointless. What's was the technology that allowed color programming to be mass produced by the mid 1960's. Probably stems from the television sets at the time. There was color, but the TVs could not duplicate it.

Which also points to this question, what came first, people having televisions or television broadcasting? As in, why would anyone have a TV without the broadcasters, and why would anyone broadcast when no one had televisions?
Actually, there were TV broadcasts in the 1930s, but no one had TVs.

History like this fascinates me.

there were a couple color shows in the mid-50s-THE CYSCO KID and THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN were both in color at least some of the episodes were. And BONANZA on NBC was filmed in color since it first started, in 1959. And the reason there weren't a lot of color shows until the mid-60s was; a lot of stations weren't able to broadcast color shows until then.

And yes there were TVs in the 30s, but they were very, very, very rare. In fact the first commercial use of TV was to show president Franklin Roosovelt presiding over the opening ceremonies of the 1939 Chicago worlds fair.

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by LUNCH

I consider color the last TRUE improvement in picture quality.And it's amazing it was introduced 60 years ago.

I agree!!

And this DIGITAL CRAP was the worst thing to ever happen to audio/video!

[Yong Fang]

I was a 1970s kid and remember watching the old George Reeves Superman and liked the show, and yes, I remember it being in color as a 1950's show.

I take it that a color television was probably very expensive be in the 1950's and even for the wealthy probably.

Nazi Germany from what I read was more advanced than the USA in the 1930's with the Berlin Olympics being televised. Eva Braun/Hitler had a television.

But to me , it is still the chicken and the egg effect, what came first? The televisions, or he television stations?

I come from Memphis, Tennessee, and the show I Love Lucy was shown on the NBC affiliate because the CBS affiliate did not begin until 1956. Basically the affiliate was free (for some reason) to show whatever shows were popular.

[installLSC]

Okay here's the short answers to your questions:
TV broadcasts started airing back in 1928(!) and regular broadcasting started in 1939 in NYC. (London and Berlin started even earlier.) Although labs did most of TV's development, they needed to do public broadcasts to make sure the dang thing would work as promised. Broadcasting also served as promotion for TV sales.
As far as color, one word: NBC. NBC and CBS fought for different systems and NBC won. NBC's owner, RCA, owned most color TV patents and would make a killing if color TV took off. A still upset CBS spitefully refused to make color shows, and since CBS was the number one rated network it could get away with that. It wasn't until 1965, when NBC nearly took that rating from CBS, that CBS went whole hog into color (and ABC had little choice but to join them).

[LUNCH]

In a way I'm glad it took color TV a fairly long time to take off.I love color,but there's also something special about black and white.To this day I don't really care if a show is in color or black and white,what matters is the quality of the program itself.Some of my favorite shows are either B+W or started as black and white and later moved on to color.

[comedyfreak]

My family didn't get a color tv until 1967 it was their treat after they received the income tax refund. They bought an RCA console tv. Happy Anniversary TV.

[James28]

The United States gradually transitioned from black-and-white to colour television between 1953 and 1968. On the other hand, some foreign countries didn't have color television until the early-to-mid 1980s, such as Turkey, Cambodia, Romania, and Zimbabwe.

[TV_on_the_Porch]

Some of the simplest questions have the most complicated answers. I think it's safe to say that in all stages or individual cases of TV development, the broadcast apparatus existed before the receiver. It is true that as far back as 1928 some experimenters were "watching TV" but it was on sets they had built themselves: motors driving discs punched with pinholes through which a sliver of light would (with luck) make a recognizable image. In other words, virtually unrecognizable today as a TV set.

While a number stations were broadcasting these very-low-res signals into the early 1930s, more progressive labs were developing all-electronic TV. Between 1931 and 1939 when TV made its "official debut" at the World's Fair, RCA did extensive research, development and actual televising--and never sold a single TV set. Hundreds were built during this time, but all remained 'in the family' as it were as field-test sets distributed to various engineers and other employees for evaluation.

One thing that isn't appreciated as much by those who aren't into the technical side, but deserves to be mentioned here: the successful reverse-engineering of color into the existing black & white standard was probably a greater technological accomplishment than the invention of TV itself.

As to the delay in color becoming universal, that is the true chicken/egg scenario. Almost no color TV sets at all (relatively speaking) were sold during the first year that they were available. They were grossly expensive, the screens were small and sometimes a week might go by between color programs. Faced with this reality, sponsors saw no benefit incurring the considerable extra expense of putting on a show in color--that almost nobody would see in color.

One thing that should be clarified: CBS did participate in the first push of compatible color in the fall of 1954 by showing one-time color episodes of various shows, a policy which lasted into the early months of 1955. It even had its own 19" color TV model for sale, for which it launched a national ad campaign a year prior to NBC parent RCA's launching of a similar campaign ("Big Color") to sell its sets.

But by and large, nobody was buying. The tipping point didn't come for many more years.

[OH Nuts!]

I remember when having a color atV was a really big deal. An affluent uncle of mine had one in the early 60s. In the mid 60s only one family on our block had a color TV. They were really nice and would invite us kids to watch Walt Disney with them on Sundays. I didn't get a color TV until 2003. ( I know...I move very s-l-o-w-l-y in some areas)