CBS color studio, 1954 photo

[Steve D.]

CBS TV color studio 72 in NYC seen from control room. Six RCA TM-10 15" color monitors in foreground. Four RCA TK-40 color cameras in studio. Possibly a publicity shot.

[Pete Deksnis]

Originally Posted by Steve D.

Six RCA TM-10 15" color monitors in foreground. Four RCA TK-40 color cameras in studio.

Steve, A lot of color monitors for one studio? Seems like overkill.

Pete

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis

Steve, A lot of color monitors for one studio? Seems like overkill.

Pete

Pete,

I'll bet David Sarnoff was just delighted knowing William Paley had to buy all that RCA color equipment.

-Steve D.

The left is a Lincoln.

Could this be studio 72 in New York? Lincoln Mercury sponsored Ed Sullivan, and he did a show in color from studio 72 on August 22.

Also, one of the test patterns looks like it says WCBS.

[kramden66]

that does look like the wcbs test pattern , they used it in the 80's and 90's , it was still black and white

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by kramden66

that does look like the wcbs test pattern , they used it in the 80's and 90's , it was still black and white

Thanks for pointing out the WCBS-TV test pattern. Probably was studio 72 in NYC. Amended my post. There was no text w/the photo.

TV City in Hollywood also had a 4 camera color studio in use in 1954.

[oldtvman]

It all seems pretty elaborate for a network that wouldn't broadcast regular color programs until the mid-60's

[old_tv_nut]

Wow - they must have had a lot of hand-holding from RCA field service to get all that running and then keep it going. It also strikes me that there must have been a pecking order of techs/cameramen as to who actually manned that studio.

I'm afraid those involved are probably no longer with us, but it would be interesting to hear their stories.

[Eric H]

Wow, six new 15GP22's and probably some spares nearby.

Those are RCA TM-10A monitors and Phil Nelson has one!

http://antiqueradio.org/RCA_TM-10_15GP22_Monitor.htm

I always heard in those days there was a lot more cooperation on the engineering side of things than there was at corporate. Might not have been unusual for someone from RCA to unofficially pop in at CBS and see how things were going. A lot of them probably knew each other.

I had an uncle who worked for ABC Sports as a sound engineer. He started about 1950doing golf. He used to talk about how ABC had to borrow almost all of their remote equipment from NBC and got a lot of help from them. Everything had NBC painted on it and people used to walk past and think they were NBC employees.

He used to say ABC wouldn't have been on the air in those early years if it wasn't for all the stuff they borrowed from NBC. At that time ABC wasn't far removed from being the NBC Blue network, so there was probably a lot of people who knew each other.

He's been gone many years now and I really wish I had talked to him more about those days and recorded it someway.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Those are RCA TM-10A monitors and Phil Nelson has one

Uh-oh, busted! I do plan to finish that restoration, but all projects are on hold while my workshop is packed up for a remodel.

Steve, with your permission it would be fun to include that photo in my TM-10 article.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[old_tv_nut]

I think there has always been cooperation at the engineering level - so it wouldn't surprise me if some of the NBC color cameramen were giving hints to CBS at the time.

When I visited the local CBS transmitter on the Hancock building (a few decades back - wow, was that channel 2 plumbing something to see), they called next door to channel 32 to get permission to roll their remote microwave dish over to the channel 32 side, a common occurrence. They regularly cooperated like this. The only hassle was that CBS had to call in a technician just to roll the dish over and aim it, because it was considered a "remote" operation once he stepped out of CBS facilities.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis

Steve, A lot of color monitors for one studio? Seems like overkill.

Pete

To paraphrase an old saw about watches and time:
A man with two color monitors never knows what the correct color is!

I'd bet that no two matched exactly.

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by Steve D.

Pete,

I'll bet David Sarnoff was just delighted knowing William Paley had to buy all that RCA color equipment.

-Steve D.

Steve, I assume that you know that RCA (and everyone else) had to pay CBS's Goldmark Lab. for every color CRT made after the 15GP22 until the Goldmark patent expired in 1972. Paley then got his revenge by firing Goldmark that year.

A similar (identical?) photo of the studio appeared on epray from one of those old picture sellers about two years ago. At the time, I thought that shot looked familiar, but could not place it.

When you posted your copy, my mind remembered seeing color and that got me thinking.

Attached is the original article from November 1954, which includes an additional shot plus a very small copy of your photo!

Sorry for the rippled images, 'cause I shot this with a normal camera.

Either I've got to buy a new scanner or fix my old DOS-based antique scanner and I don't think I'm up to repairing these modern contraptions.

Jas.

[old_tv_nut]

The article mentions "gyrating" test patterns. I'm guessing this means they were moving mechanically to prevent sharp burn-in of the pattern on the image orthicons. Later TK-41's had optical orbiters built in to perform this function.