CBS color promo film from 1954 with Ed Sullivan

This seems to have recently been posted, the notes say RCA cameras were used with the RCA logo taken off because of the vicious color wars...

 

WOW, That's a lot of crew. As technology advances things have certainly slimmed down. I remember doing some 3 Camera Work in School with as little as 6 Crew Members.

 

Evidently, during the 1954-1955 season, CBS had only 19 color broadcasts. It must have really been an event when CBS showed something in color during the mid 50s.

 

Yeah, CBS very reluctantly bought RCA TK-41 color cameras and carefully took all the logos off, painted them "CBS Gray," and added on the CBS eye. Bill Paley did not like that, and eventually issued a "Never RCA" policy.


When CBS was eventually forced to go color in 1965-1966, they tested every RCA competitor and found that the Dutch-made Philips cameras (sold under the Norelco brand in America) were better in most ways, and so pretty much all the CBS video shows switched to Norelco PC-60s and later PC-70s. Even NBC admitted that those were better cameras for some projects, and they actually used PC-70s for sports remotes during the late 1960s/early 1970s.

 

I'm surprised there were that many.

 

Ed looks like mafia enforcer in color.

 

Cool Lacoste top, but 1950s trousers are kind of...hmmm.

 

All these years later and I still have to ask, just how did Ed Sullivan ever become Mr. Television, as he is a HUGE stiff as a personality?

 

Why such great disdain for RCA things from CBS?

 

Vidiot has one these cameras and films kangaroo rat races....

 

Because they were direct competitors in every way.

Also, I think Nipper coughed on Robert Sarnoff's kitten Frisky in Central Park once.

 

RCA owned NBC at the time. No love lost between them.

 

CBS invented color TV using a "color wheel" system around 1949 or so, and the FCC approved it as the standard for American broadcasting. The system was kind of cumbersome, since it literally involved a rotating mechanical disc behind the picture tube, so the cabinet had to be roughly 40% bigger than the picture tube to include the wheel and motor mechanism. The color system worked pretty well, but the drawback was that it was somewhat incompatible with current B&W sets and proved a herringbone pattern of interference on sharp colored edges.

CBS Color System

RCA came up with a compatible color all-electronic system that could be viewed without interference on B&W sets and in full color on color sets. After mulling over that, the FCC reversed their previous decision and chose RCA's system for American color TV in 1953. CBS was livid about this, since they felt that their system had a lot of technical advantages over compatible color, and they were also not happy with their biggest rival in the network TV business (NBC) was owned one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, RCA. Here's a live demo introducing RCA's color TV set line-up from a late-1953 TV show I happened to grab from a Your Show of Shows episode:



Because of this fight over color, CBS chief Bill Paley insisted on a "No RCA" policy for any broadcast equipment, and that extended to monitors, cameras, switchers, transmitters, everything. Back in those days, RCA would actually sell you every single piece of equipment needed for a TV or radio station, down to the desks and chairs to the clocks on the wall. CBS defiantly refused to buy anything from their hated rival, even in cases where the RCA gear was the best on the market. This slowed CBS' interests in telecasting more color TV shows, since they felt all that did was promote and benefit RCA's huge color TV sales.

Eventually after more than 10 years of war, CBS admitted that color TV broadcasting's time had come, and began doing a lot of color variety shows in 1965, including Ed Sullivan, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, and some specials, and then in September of 1966, went to full-color for all prime-time programming. But they still held firm on the "No RCA" policy, and used Norelco color TV cameras, Conrac color monitors, and switchers and processing gear from various other companies.

 

There is a biography on him “Impressario” that is pretty good. Sullivan, a sports reporter turned gossip columnist, spent years trying to make it in radio or movies with little success, unlike his rival Walter Winchell (the two feuded for 30 years before making up). Essentially he found that he could organize and emcee a show. He had a skill working with agents, when to put pressure on and when to reward.
But his main thing was he had the ability to be one step, but only one step, ahead of what the public wanted. He always claimed he based his taste on what his mother, wife and daughter would like.
Sullivan could respond to competition. When NBC launched the “Colgate Comedy Hour” with a far bigger budget opposite his, he would wait until they had a weak lineup that night and then schedule a strong show to draw even in the ratings. Ultimately Colgate tired of the expense and left. When NBC went with more color shows, he had shows in different areas, including one in the Soviet Union. When NBC scheduled Walt Disney against him, he brought in puppet mouse Topo Gigio, which helped humanize him. While he had a temper, he realized that having people like Will Jordan and John Byner imitate and exaggerate his quirks was good business.
Sullivan would often tell artists like Maria Callas, Bo Diddley, Rolling Stones and Doors what to sing. Some people such as Edith Piaf and Mahalia Jackson could occasionally change his mind. But he would defend Bob Dylan when CBS didn’t want Dylan singing a song about the John Birch Society.

 

This makes me wonder if Ed Sullivan tried to convince Paley/CBS to go to color, at least for his show, sooner than it did. Look at The Lucy Show, it was filmed in color starting in its second 1963-64 season, two seasons before CBS went into at least partial color. Maybe Lucy tried to pressure CBS/Paley too.

 

Paley was a very stubborn man.

 

One of the local subchannels has Ed Sullivan. His attempts to censor Light My Fire and Let's Spend the Night Together are well known. Just watched an appearance by Gary Puckett singing Young Girl and Lady Willpower. On the latter tune Puckett sang "rules of life" instead of "facts of life" presumably at Sullivan's insistence. Pretty funny, since with or without the censored lines, these songs are both pretty explicitly about sex with underage girls.

 

Thanks a bunch Vidiot. This is great information...unfortunately I'll forget this info, but for now I know the interesting reasons. Too bad egos and stubborn attitudes got in the way of better technology. Good thing that has never happened before, or since......

 

And Skelton's color mobile production business venture didn't work out, it should be noted. He was a bit ahead of his time.

 

In the long run, I think RCA was right and their more-complex compatible color system was best. I can't imagine anybody using color wheels for home videos or professional filmmaking. A color wheel reminds me of this...

 

Before inexpensive LCD flat screens became available we had DLP projectors in the home, a modern-day implementation of the color wheel. And of course digital cinema projectors still use DLP technology.

 

Yeah, it does remind me of that too but.....That ain't all bad because the color wheel in the photo also reminds me of these things.

 

We could have had color Beatles on Ed Sullivan if it wasn't for CBS being so damn stupid? Awesome news.

 

Not only that, the last Beatles performance was broadcast September 12, 1965, the start of the season when CBS began broadcasting many color shows. The first color Ed Sullivan was Oct. 31, 1965.