[78-L] Dragnet Xmas Album (Was: Re: Rochester)

[Michael Biel]

Your description is very accurate as is this article by Ed Reitan you
link to.  Ed takes part in the annual Early Television Museum conference
which I missed going to earlier this month but was able to see via their
webstream.  Anyone in the Columbus Ohio area or passing thru should go
to the museum and see WORKING CBS color-wheel sets and the earliest
WORKING RCA color sets from 1953.  Also WORKING mechanical TVs from the
20s and early 30s.  Their site is http://www.earlytelevision.org/  

As for the Dragnet program in color on Dec 24, 1953, Ed's article lists
Dec 17, 1953 as the day of approval of NTSC and CBS beating NBC to the
punch with a show featuring Rocky Marciano (punch...er...pun intended)
using a color wheel camera adapted to NTSC!  So it is possible that the
Dragnet episode was aired in color.  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [78-L] Dragnet Xmas Album (Was: Re: Rochester)
From: "J. E. Knox" <rojoknox at metroeast.org>
Date: Sat, May 26, 2012 3:12 pm
To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>

Greetings from FixitLand!

David Breneman wrote:

> ...When customers balked at buying
> CBS's spinning-filter-wheel color TVs, CBS used the outbreak of
> the Korean War to ask the government to declare color TV a war
> materiel product so they could exit the market and save face.

Hmmm. My understanding of this is that David Sarnoff of RCA was 
behind efforts to "declare color TV a war materiel product" -- in 
order to stymie the sequential system and stick it to CBS. Not sure 
where I read this though.

Here's a pretty complete timeline of the color TV "wars":
http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/CBS_Chronology_rev_h_edit.htm

> As far as I know, the next time CBS produced one-off episodes of
> its programs in color was (I believe) 1965 (or 64?), the year
> before they started broadcasting series in color. They produced
> such a color episode of Perry Mason, but it was that series' last
> year, so Perry never made the switch to color.

That would be "The Case of the Twice-Told Twist" ('66). It still 
looks weird to me to see Perry Mason in color.

Take care,


Joe
--
"There are many intelligent species in the universe. They are all 
owned by cats."--Anonymous

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