Back then you watched it if it was in color
 

I remember a time when every week when the new tv guide came out you would check out all the upcoming shows for the week that were in color. You knew which ones they were by the little box at the top left hand corner that boldly said COLOR!!! You didnt care what the show was as long as it was in color, if it was one of your favorite programs, then it was a bonus

"Police Squad.... In Color!"

Nice beaver!
 

...why thank you, I just had it stuffed.
:lmao:

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My mom about always made us watch "Mutual of Omaha's "Wild Kingdom". Generally, it was a good show, & had neat stuff about Lions, & Tigers, & Bears-Oh, my !-so we didn't mind. It was one of the few non-network shows back then in color.-Sandy G.

I have some TV Guides from '58 & '59. Not only did they have the word COLOR in the little box on the listings page. They also listed all the color shows for the week in the front of the magazine.
I think there were as many as 10-12 color shows in the L.A. edition.
At that time the NBC affliate channel 4 had all but one color show and local channel 5 had the 1 color telecast.

-Steve D.

When I was a kid (and shopping with my mom in a department store) I'd watch anything in color. Steve D. and I have talked about this many times. NBC usually had an all color afternoon; Tom Fransden (sp?) and Jack Latham with the news. These were just "heads" on the screen against a blue background but I would watch mouth a-gog. And when that "Oscar Meyer" commercial came on in color it was pretty great. Weird that advertisers were slooooow to catch on to filming in color. I think the Hawaiian Punch/Oscar Meyer commercials were IT for color in the early '60's!

I read somewhere (here?) that the flying sequences of Superman and certain action shots of all the Irwin Allen shows were shot in color even when the shows were B&W....this was done as a hedge against reshooting these expensive special shots once the shows finally went to color.

And in Irwin Allen's case, he could resell or reuse some of that footage for other productions (king of the stock footage remake)

Anthony

the cisco kid circa 1953 superman after 1957 amd the lone ranger were ahead of their time, spending extra money to film episodes in color!!

chevrolet was actually one of the very 1st sposners that saw the value of advertising their new line of cars "in color" on the dinah shore show

I didn't count the local channel 4 news color telecast every night or their other local color broadcasts plus the two daytime NBC quiz shows.
That would up the number of color shows available each week. Just for yuks here's the color listing for Los Angeles for the week of April 4th 1959. 46 years ago this month:

"Growing World" Sat. (channel 4 local)
"Vacation Time" Sat. (channel 4 local)
"Bugs Bunny" Sat. (channel 5 local)
"Northwest Passage" Sat. (channel 4 NBC)
"Perry Como" Sat. (channel 4 NBC)
"Steve Allen" Sun. (channel 4 NBC)
"Dinah Shore" Sun. (channel 4 NBC)
"Local News" daily (channel 4 local)
"Curt Massey" local daily music show (channel 4 local)
"Arthur Murray" Mon. (channel 4 NBC)
"Jimmie Rodgers" Tues. (channel 4 NBC)
"Price is Right" Wed. (channel 4 NBC)
"Milton Berle" Wed. (channel 4 NBC)
"Bell Telephone Hour Thurs. (channel 4 NBC)
"Masquerade Party" Thur. (channel 4 NBC)
"Ellery Queen" Fri. (channel 4 NBC)
"Haggis Baggis" daytime (channel 4 NBC)
"Truth or Consequences" daytime (channel 4 NBC)
This was an especially good week for color set owners. At least one network color show each night.

Another example is the TV Guide L.A. Edition week of Jan.14, 1956 over 49 years ago. Total color telecasts for the entire week: 3
Ford Star Jubilee Special Sat. (channel 2 CBS) live
NBC Opera Theater Sun. (channel 4 NBC) live
Matinee Theater Daily (channel 4 NBC) live?

-Steve D.

I have a copy of the Price Is Right from 1963 which features the then new Studebaker Avanti as the main prize.....but this was in B&W. Go figger.

Anthony

Early '60s color
 

Re color commercials in the early '60s: the Kraft Food commercials were vivid.

Do you have vintage programs with repetitions of these shows today?
Are there shows of this or later times still available in DVD or Video CD? Can somebody here in AK make a copy? I would like to see such a show of this time.

Here in Australia color test telecasts began in late 1974 then as if by some miracle we woke up on 1st march 1975 and everything was in colour.

Everyone was ready ...except it seems our politicians....to have colour television ..but then the equivalent of the FCC here didn't even think we need TV at all and for one reason or another they delayed colour.

It had taken the fact that the Olympics were here 1956 that TV broadcasting began at all!

I'd like to think that your politicians were especially wise, but they were more likely lazy and technologically retarded (as is the case here, lol).

I'm 32, and I can remember when the local TV guide would call out a color program with a capital "C". Then they started calling out the B&W shows. My parents didn't get a color set until 1975, a low-feature 19" Zenith Chromacolor II. My grandparents got a 23" Zenith color set in 1968, and I was fascinated with it.

I also remember stashing away a few Detroit TV guides around 1986-ish, because I thought they'd be interesting to look at years from now..

8:00 PM

(2) CBS Please Pass the Butter: Mr. Twilicker gets upset when a neighbor dumps spaghetti on his porch, with comedic results. C (Q)

(4) NBC ALF: Alf runs away from home when the family cat disappears. Hi-jinks to follow. C (Q)

(7) ABC My Whacky Wife: After Steve gets laid-off, Samantha gets a job at the spark factory, with comedic results. C (Q)

(9) CBC Hockey Night In Canada: Hockey. C

(20) IND The Movie Show: Slaughter's Big Score (1973) Jim Brown plays a black crimefighter and ladies-man who takes down the syndicate and the corrupt LA police department with his Kung-Fu skills. ** C

(32) TVO Newsmakers: Documentary on Canadian pineapple farmers and their struggle to survive. C

(50) IND The 8 o'clock Movie: Tron (1982) Humans are transported inside a computer, then ride motorcycles and fight evil. *** C

(56) PBS Frontline: Documentary on Mexican maple syrup harvesters, and their struggle to survive. C

(62) IND R.J. Watkins Celebrity Dance Party and Community Outreach: Local celebrities dance and raise money to rebuild a burned-down liquor store. B&W

(78) CBEFT La Qu'tue de Auntonette du Cadiuex: In French. C

Of course my mother tossed out the TV guides at some point, so I had to do that from memory! :lmao:

"Wild Kingdom" is still on in syndication (with or without Marlon Perkins; I'm not sure if he still hosts the show), although I can't quite remember what channel/time it's on here--I think it might be on PBS or an independent station, but I'm not sure. PBS does have National Geographic shows (at least they are on PBS channel 25 here) which might be on Charter Cable in your area as well. The Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom series was good TV in its day (and still is, if you can get it in your area), a lot better than most of the stuff on the networks these days. IMHO, your mom had the right idea, making you watch Wild Kingdom. Even in the '60s-'70s that show was better than the meager fare which was television in those days, if you could get it (and a heck of a lot better than the garbage that passes for entertainment on cable today).

BTW, I'm wondering. When did you (or your folks) get your first color TV set? You mention that Wild Kingdom was one of the few non-network shows to be telecast in color, which leads me to believe you may have had color TV as early as the 1960s.

Kind regards,

I did the same with several early-2000s TV Guides for the Cleveland metro area, mainly because they had articles commemorating the 50th year of NBC's "Today Show", a look back at the "I Love Lucy" show some years after Lucille Ball passed away, and even an issue commemorating TV Guide's own golden anniversary. I still have them tucked away in a drawer in the nightstand in my bedroom; you can be sure I'll hold on to them, as they are one of a kind.

Ah, memories.

Pretty good, Carmine...had me going for a second there!

At the beginning of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom there was a thing that came up that stated that the show was approved by some agency or something, for being eductational or whatever. Since I couldn't read it that well I mistook it to mean that the program was somehow inappropriate for children & felt funny about watching it! Kids come up with weird stuff like that. Like how, at the beginning of Sesame Street (and other Children's Television Workshop shows) they would flash a number, I think it was the show number, it might be like 1243. I thought that was the year the show was taped, and that somehow I did not understand the whole time/space continum or something and that this was really possible!

I also have a stash of TV Guides, got to dig them out someday. When I was a kid the first place I would turn was to the page where they listed the tv stations, to make sure there were no changes, no new stations I might miss! It was always a matter of pride to see the display ads for the 2 local stations, they usually would not shell out for more than maybe one ad a piece each week. Another great feature was Television Q&A with David Lauchenbrach (sp?). Someone wrote in once (mid-80s) to ask if their Predicta was worth fooling with, he told them it was. I also recall him saying somewhere that "new tv sets cannot be damaged by vacuum cleaners like early sets" and I wrote to see how early he meant, to make sure my '54 RCA bw set would be okay! (still awaiting that reply!) Looking back I'm sure he was talking about early color sets.

To answer a question, Marlon Perkins died in the early 80's. Jim Fowler took over.

Our first color TV was an Airline (Monkey Ward made by Admiral). My late father bought it and tried to disguise it as a Mother's Day gift. He really wanted to watch the Senate Watergate hearings in color. My mother wasn't fooled.

I wasn't around for the conversion to color, but I do see shows listed as BW telecasts.

Well, here's a little nostalgia for everyone...

http://www.kinescopes.com/tvguide3.jpg

And just look at all the game shows...!!

-Kevin

I was 1 year 4 months old at that publication date. :D I probabally caught them all in reruns in the early 1970's. My folks had a Quasar roundie back then.


polaraman

I was born in 1966, I remember we had a 1959 Philco B&W TV, I think it was a 21 or 23 inch, rectangular tube no UHF tuner. I might have a pic somewhere of it. Anyways, I remember my aunt had a color "Roundie" RCA TV, I think it looked like it could have been a CTC-14, 15 or 16 from what I've seen here, I think it was from 1961 or 1962 maybe. I thought, "wow, in color!!" We finally got color in 1971 with a 23 inch Zenith Chromacolor (I still have it) and along with that, we got cable. I was always fascinated by the old roundies ever since my aunt had one.

What city was this TV guide for?

Portland, Oregon.

-Kevin

Damn check out Peter Falk and Jack Carter, they were on two daytime shows on the same day!
Hey at least Jeopardy and Hollywood Squares are still on...or did Squares get canned again?

We have a nostalgic tv-guide website, collecting all the old tv-guides from Austria, Switzerland, East and West Germany, starting in 1952 thru 1999:
http://www.tvprogramme.net/index.html

Our 1st color set was some sort of HORRID Sears special. IIRC, it was made in Japan, was tubes, & had a rectangular screen. We had the service contract on it, & Sears lost their arse on that one. Then, the Portacolor came out, My dad got one of those. Little guy didn't have much of a picture,but it sure was a trooper, staying "on" 12-14 hrs a day for several years til we got our 1st Trinitron.-Sandy G.

Sandy most likely that Sears was a Sanyo, which was japans answer to the motorola look poor color and smooth picture

I had one of those Sears/Sanyo sets for a while. It was a 19inch (I think, I know it was a smaller screen size than the roundies or the early rectangular sets at the time.) metal consolette set. It looked like a metal table model with long skinny legs attached. Horrid is a good description. It was a nightmare to work on, and it must have weighed 600 lbs. (well it felt that heavy anyway) I ended up scraping it since it was impossible to keep working for any length of time.

Heavy set dude...
 

I recall having two of those Sears sets once upon a time. And you're right they were heavy. There was a thread here on AK and a picture posted some time back. I remember posting that I first saw that Sears 19" set in Sears TV dept. It looked mighty small standing next to its roundie brothers.

-Steve D.

Yep- seems like ours was a 19" model, & had those funny skinny legs.IIRC, tho whole damn thing was kinda odd-looking. My dad sold it to a fella who worked where he did, don't think it ever gave the guy a speck of trouble. Maybe it didn't like us or something....<grin>-Sandy G.

An aunt of mine in Chicago who worked for Sears owned a large color console with that tilt out control panel. This too may have been a Sanyo. Only reason she bought that set and not a Zenith is due to her major employee discount....otherwise, the rest of my relatives all owned Zeniths.....being the good Chicagoans they are.

Anthony