Color television had larger impact than digital television

no, not really but it may be for others...the colors were SO BOLD! and so amazingly colorful! I can still feel the rush when I first witnessed color TV in our home...I was floored. Lost In Space was very colorful...all the shows back then used bright colors that popped...Batman was one as well...

 

We were the 1st ones both on our street & in our family to get a color TV in 1966, a Zenith console model. I remember being g amazed by it in comparison to out old B&W TV, which wound up in my bedroom.

 

It was quite the deal. Not all shows were broadcast in color so it made the ones that were even more special.

 

Color TV had a slow rollout. The early shows often featured men in suits (Sing-a-long with Mitch!) and the color was pretty bad. I remember walking two miles to a Sears store to look at color TVs and wasn’t impressed. Black and white TVs had more detail and a better tonal scale until the Trinitrons in the early 1970s. The black and white shows from the 50s were shot on regular 35mm film stock, the color shows were often on 16mm film stock, even into the 80s.

 

exactly!

 

Had to be Mannix as Cannon didn't debut until 1971.

 

Color TV?
Wow factor, definitely!!!!!!

 

Before advent of color TV studios had to use more creative lightning. Color allowed to differentiate actors' faces from the background even with flat lightning, which became prevalent in soap operas and multi-camera shows. When people talk about "video look", they often mean (besides "live" image rate) this shadeless look having no depth. Aside of simplified lightning and different makeup, little had changed in terms of framing, the TV was still a small 20-inch (give or take a couple of inches) screen, and the close-up was the most used shot type. Widescreen movies, which became popular in late 1950s and 1960s, were mercilessly pan-and-scanned for TV broadcast.

My late 1990s 27-inch color TV had scanlines almost as thick as my fingers. Interlaced twitter looked bad on big screen. It was garbage. At that time Europe had widescreen PALPlus format, which also allowed true progressive 25p mode for movies. European TVs had 100 Hz flicker-free refresh rate. All this was largely unavailable in the U.S. The 1990s were dark ages in terms of television in the U.S.

HD brought high resolution, bigger and wider screens, finally a home TV could replace a movie theater. Cinemascope movies could be watched in all their glory. Suddenly TV anchors have shown their age with all their tiny wrinkles visible. Turned out that Arnie was not riding the motorcycle in Terminator 2. True progressive scan or built-in deinterlacers dealt with interline twitter and with vertical filtering used in interlaced TV. Some TVs could switch to true 48fps (or 72fps) cinema mode without relying on juddery 2-3 pulldown. Plasma ruled the game. HD was a breath of fresh air. It was a game-changer.

 

Around 1962, we had (somewhat-wealthy) neighbors across the street who lived in what we'd now called an "estate" house. I knew their daughter, who was my age at school, and she invited me over one Sunday night to watch TV. I was floored to see The Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza in color, and it was a real big deal to see these shows in "living color" back then, when it was a novelty.

Stereo sound was a slower roll-out, but I was part of one of the first NBC stereo broadcasts with Terror at London Bridge in early 1985. I can tell you the network was really nervous and sent over 2 engineers to check every single cable and feed to make sure this TV movie would sound good in mono and stereo. A few years later, stereo was commonplace, but the "In Stereo (Where Available)" opening banner was a novelty throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Most of the networks began to go HD in 1998-1999, and by September 1999 most of the prime-time schedule had moved to HD. I think what I remember most is that suddenly the picture was a lot w-i-d-e-r than old 4x3 TV, and I think that had a big impact for a lot of people. The technology to allow making larger TV sets also hit around the same time, so within a 10-year period I think we went from an average screen size of about 25" to well over 40" by 2010. Nowadays, in 2020, I would say 50" or even 55" is the average. That is an enormous screen when you consider TV's humble beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s.

I don't think the digital nature of TV made that big a splash, but widescreen HD did have a real impact on TV production and on viewers. To me, it's one of those things that blurred the lines (no pun intended) as to what a TV show was vs. what a feature film was. I think there isn't much difference anymore between the two in terms of story or characters or dramatic impact or the look.

 

Mannix was better than the fat man ! Of course they were both better than Barnaby Jones!

 

Me too. I'm a little older than you I believe. When I was kid it was all westerns. Have Gun Will Travel was my favorite. High Chaparral was around 68?

 

Cannon had the best writing, most varied plots. Barnaby Jones was the worst. Pretty much the same plot for every episode. Mannix was in between. A lot of repetition, Mannix gets knocked out every episode it seems, always ending in a fistfight with the cops showing up. Plus Mannix was always right about everything. Finally near the end they had him make mistakes a couple of times, I was shocked. The early and late episodes were the most varied.

 

The interesting thing about the color TV transition is it made a lot of the TV studios’ back librarIes dated - if not obsolete - by the time color TV reached mass adoption. In the 1970s, stations wanted color reruns for their daytime schedules. So many old B&W shows started fading from public consciousness. “Bonanza” stuck around a lot longer than “Wagon Train”, simply because it was a color show and was still running in good time periods in the 70s and 80s. There are some exceptions of course - the true classics like “I Love Lucy” kept getting rerun despite the monochrome.

 

And Jim Rockford trumped all three of them!

Oddly enough I just picked up The Rockford Files complete series this Sunday & I'm currently watching it.

 

Hard to beat Jimbo!

 

That happend at our house too. My dad bought a new large console Sears color TV around 1965 and several of the neighbors came over to look at it. My friends would come over to watch cartoons, Hobo Kelly and Bozo!
Our old Admiral black & white set was relegated to the room of my two older brothers.

 

What is meant by digital TV? Linear digital or streaming? If streaming then I'd say no. My kids frankly struggle with the idea of waiting a week to watch something and just don't really get it. On demand has always been there so far as they know.

People now watch TV on the train or tube when they want. Whether this is good or bad I can't say but it's totally changed the face of TV production and distribution.

 

Exactly why I chose it! Very fond memories of looking through my big brothers stack of Hot Rod and CARtoons magazines!

 

Back in yesteryear if you missed a show during the regular season you hoped to catch it during the summer reruns. How times have changed.

 

Folks, in terms of real value, a 1954 RCA Victor, 'The Merrill", the first color TV set using NTSC color, cost $1000 1954 dollars, (and this is a 15" screen) than your fancy Plasma or LCD/LED screen did when inflation is factored in. Also, remember this set would have averaged 3 to 4 service calls a year. That set was also not built with import labor either. Built back when that set wasn't discounted, and was sold by a RCA Victor dealer, who could also repair and install it. Early color TV was so much more special and expensive in real terms than any consumer electronic item which followed it. That Color TV in 1954, cost about what a very basic new automobile did then.