January 27, 1953: First Public Broadcast Demonstration of RCA-NTSC Color Television

[Jeffhs]

I don't know for the life of me why everyone says NTSC color television was invented in the year 1953. I don't think so. In the first place, black-and-white TV was not invented until the late 1940s, so why was anyone messing around with color TV in 1953? Very few people even had b&w television in the late '40s, let alone color. Don't forget, NBC invented color TV in the year nineteen fifty six, not nineteen fifty three; remember the NBC peacock, which was shown over the network before every color broadcast? NBC always made an annoucement before every color broadcast it showed: "The following program is brought to you in living color on NBC", with customized versions of the announcement made for cities in which NBC owns stations, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and the list goes on. NBC sold its O&O station in Cleveland twice, once in 1955 and again ten years later; the station's programming and local station IDs went from bad to worse with each sale, eventually reaching the point where it is now, with the local shows (the few which are left, thank goodness, none of which I watch because they are, IMHO, such nonsense and in many cases trash) becoming almost the worst nonsense ever seen on television, in my opinion, in northeastern Ohio. For example, whose bright (! ! !) idea was it to start showing the Cleveland station's call letters in lower-case letters at the top of the screen, practically unreadable to most people watching the program, especially in this age of HDTV? I don't watch NBC that much except for at most three shows (New Amsterdam, Chicago Med and The Good Doctor, the last on another network), but the station ID shows at the top of my TV screen in lower-case letters for perhaps five seconds and just about drives me up the wall. (This used to annoy heck out of me, but now I simply ignore it.) I couldn't care less about the station's ID, although I realize this must be shown at least once an hour in accordance with FCC regulations, so I tolerate it and enjoy the show.