I also found this Dec. 1954 L.A.TV Guide listing for Shower of Stars. While the ad states, in small print, that the show is in B&W & color, the listings don't contain the "COLOR" icon. CBS telecast Shower of Stars live in the east & midwest in color, but the delayed prime time broadcast was via B&W kinescope in the west. CBS didn't use color kinescope for time delay. NBC did use color kinescope for some west coast prime time color shows. The quality of the color kine was questionable. Film shows could be broadcast in color in prime time in all time zones.

-Steve D.

Interesting Steve! So which CBS stations in the US could transmit in color?

By late 1954 many CBS affiliates could transmit network color broadcasts to their local markets. There was some cost incurred to modify the transmitters and install color monitoring equipment. Locally originated color via film/slide or live color equipment was rare at most stations. High cost, minuscule % of color sets and sponsor reluctance to pay additional costs of producing local commercials/programs in color dictated affiliates to hold off on other than network originated color broadcasts for quite some time.

-Steve D.

Nice 15GP22 monitor in that one picture. I wonder how long such monitors were kept in service in commercial/broadcast use? The answer might be related to that one known "made in 1959" 15GP22 CRT.

Why did channels 4 & 5 in LA have adjacent spectrum assignments in same city?

Same situation as in N.Y.C. There were 7 channels in Los Angeles after about 1949. I guess the FCC figured that there would be no cross interference with the closest meto area. There is/was no channel 4 or 5 for hundreds of miles from L.A. I can't speak for New York City.

-Steve D.

Remember there is a 4 mHz gap between 4 and 5, so they aren't really adjacent.

The Eyes of a Generation Facebook page a few days ago posted the photo below from the Life series and I pasted the info from the post. By the way, if you want to follow their Facebook page, the link is here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eyes-...768249?fref=nf

http://www.gstatic.com/hostedimg/22b...61def8_landing

"Backtracking...With The Help Of Tom Kennedy!

Earlier in the week, I posted this photo with video of 'The Bob Crosby Show'. Since then, I have heard from one of the people in this photo...legendary game show host, Tom Kennedy, and he had three surprise comments on this picture that I'll share.

The first surprise is that the floor director (with headphones) is none other than Dave Powers who went on to direct 'The Carol Burnett Show'.

The second surprise is that this is not Tom Kennedy...yet. The man with the cake on his plate is Jim Narz who is doing a one week fill in for his brother Jack Narz. Early in their careers, the two brothers were in demand in Hollywood, but being brothers with similar names caused some confusion. Out of respect to his older brother, Jim Narz took his now famous stage name...Tom Kennedy. He is also the brother-in-law to Bill Cullen.

The third surprise came seconds after this rehearsal photo was taken. In order to help "sell" the commercial for Betty Crocker cake mix, Jim took a bite. Turns out, the cake was made of putty! Bob Crosby and everyone on the set almost died laughing!

Many thanks to Tom, and to our friend David Schwartz at the Game Show Network for putting us in touch. Enjoy and share."

Love every moment of it-Wasn't that Red Skelton in the center of the audience

The thought had occurred to me: "How is all that chocolate icing not melting under the crazy bright studio lamps necessary for early color cameras to produce decent picture?" I'll think twice before comparing terrible frosting-in-a-can to fluffy plaster in the future.


I can tell I'm up past my normal bedtime now. I just spent about 15 seconds chuckling about "So Jim, just how delicious was that cake? Well Bob, I gotta tell you, it was pretty fake!"