Broadcast Videotape's 50th Anniversary
 

Perhaps slightly o/t, but today marks the 50th anniversary of videotape's use in broadcast tv: on 11/30/56, CBS taped and replayed "Douglas Edwards and the News"--all 15 minutes of it--for time-delayed broadcast. That tape's long gone, but let's tip our hats to this historic moment.

First-time poster, btw; pix of my sets to come.

Jeff

Hi Jeff, welcome to AK and thank you for that neat tidbit of info!

I wish the Networks would have been more aware/concerned with their history and had saved stuff like that.

what happened to the tape?

They erased it for reuse.

Yeah, pal, Welcome to AK ! They "taped over" a LOT of good stuff back in the early days of videotape-it must have been expensive. However, by '61 they'd got it down cheaper-there were several episodes of "The Twilight Zone" taped that year instead of filmed, 'cause the network-CBS- wanted to save a little money.

They probably figured that there would be little point in saving a tape of a newscast. It's not like you can play that show as a rerun next Summer.... And if tape was quite expensive....

Hi all,

2" Quadruplex Video tape was $250 a reel then. That's why many tapes were erased. That was a lot of money to an network affiliate then. Tapes then also had to be sent to a station with the heads on the recorder that made the tape. The Ampex VR-1200 was a pricey machine, they cost around 60,000.00 new. They also required a skilled engineer operating them and bucketfuls of tubes often during maintenance. Just some history of early video. These beasts ran at 15 IPS then and lasted 30 minutes to a reel of tape.

Let not forget one reason some early shows were saved is they would cut the tape to edit the show like film. It would make the roll no good for reuse.

I once had a 90 min roll come off an RCA quad duing rewind that thing hit the floor and took off, hit the wall and put a hole in it. We always made sure the hub locks were on good and tight after that.

There are still some of the Ampex 2000's AVR 1, 2, 3's still around that are operational. Both Ampex and RCA had spot players they were a work of art.
It would make me feel like a kid again to see an ACR25 do a spot break during the supperbowl with everyone in the VTR room watching it hoping it would not mess up. Those were the days it's all simple now.
It was a hard format to keep working good but when it was it made great pictures. A format in everyday use for almost 30 years and most of the great shot on video shows during the 60's and 70's we see today as reruns were mastered on it. They had an old Ampex 1000 in the back room I never did see it turned on but it really did have I'd say way over 100 tubes in it's two racks of electronics.

oh christ. how stupid of me. LMAO, i should have known that. ;)

1. HAHA i would love to see that
2. I know someone will try to flame me.. but this is just a QUESTION. Would it be possible to replace some of those tubes with solid state.. kind of like, eliminate a whole rack of tubes with a tiny circuit board? it'd be cool to just have the VR1000 with a backpack of solid state electronics make it work. I suppose that kind of defeats the nostalgia and the character of the old beast. Be fun to stick some in a TK-41 so it runs cooler...

Another critical factor in these tapes being re-used was that, besides being expensive, they were incredibly rare. 3M had huge problems manufacturing acceptable-quality tape in the beginning. In April 1957, when CBS and NBC were taping shows every day, 3M had only managed to make a total of 50 acceptable blank tapes. I wouldn't be surprised if, for that first broadcast, CBS had only one tape at its disposal.