First Ad’s for color TV in 1954 Life Magazines
 

I have been reading each issue of Life magazine off Google working my way forward from 1950. The 4/26/54 issue has a full page color ad for Westinghouse color tv on page 115. The model pictured has doors over the tube that are closed. I was wondering when I would see the first ad but expected it to be RCA. http://https://books.google.com/books?id=SlMEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=g bs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=true.

Westinghouse H840CK15. I own the one that was auctioned in Portland in 2020.
Westinghouse beat the CT-100 (also have one) to market by over a month. Admiral beat them both by a decent margin, and it's possible that Raytheon was the actual first claiming you could order their color set in December of 1953 (within something like a week of NTSC color being standardized).

The one thing RCA could claim with the CT-100 is the first MASSPRODUCED color TV....They made 4-5K of them on an actual assembly line as they would a volume selling monochome set. All the other 15" 1954 color sets, and even a good chunk of NON-RCA color between 54 and 61 were hand built because a production run of 10-500 didn't warrant tooling up an entire production line.

Nice advertisement. I made a framed poster of that ad and it’s displayed in my home.

I have two sources that say Admiral manufactured 1000 15 inch color sets in 1953-54 and in April began shipping a “second series” of sets.

Westinghouse started production of the H840CK15 on January 10, 1954. They were “producing two dozen sets a day” and in production for 6 months. Even if one halved that production rate (slow start up, and slow downs) the production would be 2160 sets.

Going by surviving sets those numbers don't seem accurate. There's 178 known surviving CT-100s, 30 Westinghouse H840CK15s, and only 6 Admiral C1617As.
If survival rates were identical there'd be 2x as many surviving Westinghouse sets and 6x as many Admirals...I can believe that big of a difference in the Westinghouse, but the Admiral would need to be infamous for a recall, bad reliability (compared to the other sets), or something to explain a production that high and survival rate that dismal.

There are hand made prototypes with the same or better number of surviving sets than the Admiral.

RCA had the highest production numbers for the CT100. Admiral, Westinghouse and RCA 15 inch color sets in 1954 all had 6 month productions prior to shutting down for the 19 inch and 21 inch models. Westinghouse ended H840CK15 about end of June 1954. I’ve attached links to Westinghouse 1954 color production line. (Date verified)

Are we to believe Westinghouse only produced 2.7 color sets a day with 275-300 employees on the line?

Admiral had sets all over the country in dealer stores. Most color sets (all three) sat idle as NOS in warehouses. Stores that had them as late as 1957 sold at steep price reductions, $199. Why would the public want to buy a 15 inch color set when they knew they could buy a 19 inch Moto, Westy or a 21 inch color RCA in Fall and Christmas time 1954, for less money.

You can’t go by sets found, you go by production time. When I acquired my Westy H840CK15, there were only 19 in the ETF database. Now there are 32.

https://visions4netjournal.com/wp-co...C8282F4FC.jpeg

https://visions4netjournal.com/wp-co...A2304DD29.jpeg

Second 1954 advertisement
 

Finally a second ad in the 8/30/1954 Life Magazine. Pages 84-85.
A Motorola 19CT1, 19” color tv. Plus a list of about 3 dozen shows in color. More than I expected. Maybe with Christmas coming up, they are starting to advertise. With all the RCA radio and tv ad’s I have seen here, I am surprised they have not advertised a color tv.

https://books.google.com/books?id=R1...page&q&f=false

I have doubts about many of the color shows listed, especially if they were on CBS. For example, Wikipedia says I've Got a Secret switched to color in 1966. Some other series shows did only one episode in color. Shows carried by NBC are much more likely to have been in color than CBS and certainly not ABC.

Arthur Godfrey's shows were on CBS, and had been broadcast in the non-compatible CBS color system a few years before, but I don't know if they were broadcast in color afterward; it sounds iffy to me.

“With all the RCA radio and tv ad’s I have seen here, I am surprised they have not advertised a color tv.”

To your point, the public wasn’t interested in color TV. To little color programming, screen to small (11 1/2) viewable inches and to expensive, one thousand and up. In 1954, a person could buy a car for those prices.

CBS 19” Color
 

2 page ad, 10/18/1954 Life, pages 40/41. CBS color tv. 19” 205 sq inch.

https://books.google.com/books?id=pF...page&q&f=false