The GE PE250 Early Color Television Camera

[W.B.]

Very interesting, all. But I remember the exhibition tax issue and the setups of NBC and ABC. I think this even affected independent station WNEW-TV, which had much of its telecine equipment (involving the showing of movies on their various umbrellas, i.e. Five Star Movie, Metromedia Movie, Movie Greats, Hollywood's Finest) in its final years of Metromedia ownership around the area of that company's corporate HQ in Secaucus, NJ.

But in a sense, it makes sense ABC in NY would have used TK-27's. I once saw a clip someone taped off of WABC-TV in New York in 1983 where the color test pattern's white balance appeared turquoise green/bluish, not unlike what people waking up in Washington, DC to WRC-TV's test pattern saw on their color sets. So, that would mean that the following NY stations would have used the TK-27 (that I know of):
- WNBC-TV
- WNEW-TV
- WABC-TV
- WOR-TV
- WPIX
- WNDT / WNET (?)
with WCBS-TV the odd one out, the only one to use the GE PE-240's (but then, they were housed on the grounds of the Broadcast Center, so . . . ). Don't know about what the old WNYC-TV used at the point they converted to color in 1968 . . .

It would also likely mean that sometimes when they had on the color test pattern in the morning, the blacks were sort of dark green-bluish, the greys were about greenish, and the whites orange/pinkish. I've seen quite a few video clips of test patterns on local stations known to have TK-27's in their telecine setups to notice.

And then the auto-iris which was part of the TK-27. Many a video clip on various sites besides YouTube show the characteristics thereof, where a scene goes from dark to light and the first second or so is too light before the exposure adjusts.

Now, can any member of this forum from Chicago apprise us of the telecine setups of the local stations there? (I seem to remember WBBM and WFLD definitely used TK-27's, probably WCIU via hand-me-downs, maybe even WSNS).