"To Tell the Truth" Bud Collyer - Vintage CBS Color broadcast, Thanksgiving, 1967

Not a hilarious as the "April Fool's Joke" about a guy who'd made Stew from DOG FOOD! Kitty Carlisle spitting it out when she'd realized just she was eating,and another celebrity trying to throw it at the host is side-splitting!

 

I loved that show! Thanks for posting.

 

joel, that color image is rock solid. Would that be One inch Quad tape?

 

That would be my guess, very clean.

 

Measurin. heh

 

2"! Every inch counts. Probably 2" low-band color, is my guess.



1" helical was an old industrial format in the 1970s, and eventually became a broadcast format by 1979-1980. There was a sort-of 1" quadruplex format in the 1980s, the Bosch 1" B system, but it didn't last long.

 

By 1967, CBS would have used hi-band Ampex VR-2000's and/or VR-1200's to record their shows; the former machine, remember, had been introduced in 1964.

Around the time the daytime TTTT left CBS's scheduled in 1968, the Ed Sullivan Theatre which was the show's final home (and also the first home of the 1969-78 syndicated version) had replaced their Norelco PC-70's (albeit the first produced version with round applied handles) with Marconi Mark VII color cameras (this, from Bobby Ellerbee's Eyes of a Generation site, which can be found here); this, whilst PC-70's remained at their Broadcast Center on West 57th.

 

How did they record the audience vote?

 

Those courious creatures look like middle school girls today.

 

She's so youthful, but she was born in January of 1922, so she actually was 45 in 1967!

 

Thanks, Kevin, for the post and insight on the audience tally devices

 

I have to correct myself..That You Tube clip was about Stroganoff made with DOG FOOD! I'll try to find that clip,so I can show you what I meant!

 

Here's "The Famous Stroganoff" Episode,from "To Tell the Truth": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crFVwx_lae8

 

Bud was nicer on TV than in real life, but then we'd be getting into politics.

 

Ooh, glad I just saw this thread. Missed it the first time around. Love these behind the scenes discussions on early TV production! We've come a long way, but we've also lost the mystique of broadcasting as well. Neat!

dan c

 

Oh that's funny, didn't notice the DV tape there at first. Even that thing's becoming obsolete now with HD and flash capture!

I remember those massive quad reels and machines from my short time in TV. Did grunt work at the underfunded PBS affiliate in El Paso in the late-80s. They had two 2" Ampex machines they used for sponsor spots before programming. 'Sesame Street is brought to you locally by Juan's Auto Repair'... I learned to work the monsters, it was such fun. All the adjusting and winding and threading, setup took practice. It was a rush getting tapes swapped out right before broadcast. All computerized now!

dan c

 

Notice all that vignetting on the upper corners, particularly on the host's tight shots. Never would see that over the air with TVs of the era.

Was that usually caused by the lenses of the time or the camera itself?

dan c

 

That was called "overscan." This was seen to a degree with some color cameras, including Norelcos and also Ikegami HK-312C, but not to the extent as seen on full-scan videotapes of old B&W shows where there was overscan all over the place, especially with the old RCA I/O's. I presume the lenses would've been the culprit . . .

 

I thought 'overscan' was when you lost picture area during transmission and on tube TVs. As in, thanks to 'overscan' you'd never see that vignetting back in the day. When I ran studio camera I remember tape markings on our monitors to help us compose with enough headroom because so much was lost on its way to the viewer's TV. It's been a while since I did anything in TV though so I could be off.

dan c