THE FIRST COMMERCIALLY SPONSORED TELEVISION PROGRAM TO BE BROADCAST IN COLOR  

Premiere is the first commercially sponsored television program to be broadcast in color. The program was a variety show which aired as a special presentation on June 25, 1951, on a five-city network hook-up of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) television stations. Its airing was an initial step in CBS's brief and unsuccessful campaign to gain public acceptance of its field-sequential method of color broadcasting, which had recently been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as the first commercial color television broadcasting standard for the United States.

BACK STORY: Competition for a U.S. color broadcasting standard

CBS's field-sequential color broadcasting system was an electro-mechanical system. It transmitted monochrome images electronically, and color was then added mechanically by placing a rapidly spinning (1440 r.p.m.) transparent tricolor disk in front of the television screen. This spinning Red-Green-Blue disk, when synchronized with a corresponding spinning disk in a color television camera, created the impression of full color. A major downside to the CBS system was that the video images being transmitted were not "compatible" with current monochrome television sets, meaning that unless these sets were modified they would render these video transmissions as meaningless lines and squiggles (with the very rare exception of some sets which would produce four small black-and-white images, one in each corner of the screen.)

The primary challenger to CBS's system was an all-electronic color system employing a dot-sequential method which was being developed by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), the parent company of the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). The RCA system had a distinct advantage in that it was compatible, meaning that current black-and-white televisions could receive a monochrome picture without any adjustments or modifications. However the color image produced on RCA's tricolor picture tubes had repeatedly been found unsatisfactory by the FCC.

On October 11, 1950 the FCC gave its official approval of CBS's field-sequential color system and stated that commercial color broadcasting could begin on November 20, 1950.   Legal objections were immediately raised by RCA and others and the resulting court case worked its way through the courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 28, 1951 on an 8-1 vote the Supreme Court sided with the FCC, stating that commercial color programming could begin in twenty-five days.  CBS announced that it would commence commercial broadcasting with Premiere on Monday, June 25, 1951. This would be the beginning of CBS's initial plan to broadcast twenty hours of color a week by autumn.  RCA and others were still free to continue working on a competing compatible color system.

Synopsis of the June 25, 1951, broadcast

A five-minute test pattern led off the color broadcast at 4:30 p.m., EDT.

Premiere began at 4:35 p.m., EDT. It was opened by "Patty Painter" (Patricia Stinnette) a professional model and West Virginia native who for many years had been employed by CBS to pose for on-camera tests of its color television system. During this program she would perform some of her usual video tasks, such as pouring the contents of a bottle of beer into a glass. She introduced Arthur Godfrey, the host of the first half-hour, who greeted the viewers with the self-deprecating quip about how "awful" it must be to see his face. During the first half-hour he would present several commercial products as well as strum on a guitar and sing "On Top of Old Smoky".

Three individuals then made brief congratulatory remarks: William S. Paley, CBS Board Chairman; Frank Stanton, CBS President; and Wayne Coy, FCC Chairman. Chairman Coy addressed the timing of the FCC's decision, stating that the FCC "sincerely believed that color in television now is more important than a promise of color in the future. Such promises in the past have had a way of going unfulfilled."

Next to appear was Faye Emerson, dressed in a blue gown. During her appearance she presented several colorful paintings which had been provided by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and by the New York Museum of Modern Art. The paintings on display ranged from Picasso's Girl before a Mirror to a Hopper and a Renoir. She also did a presentation for sponsor Pepsi-Cola and bantered a bit with humorist Sam Levenson who stated how glad he was to be alive in these times.

In the second half-hour Ed Sullivan showed up for hosting duties.  During his segment he promoted Mercury and Lincoln automobiles. 

Garry Moore was the next to appear.  During his appearance Moore showcased several commercial products, including Tenderleaf tea, Aunt Jemima, Duz powdered washing soap, Ivory soap and Chase and Sanborn coffee. He was also joined by Durward Kirby in a well-received comedy skit in which Moore played a pitchman who attempted to demonstrate a hopelessly useless vegetable slicer.

The New York City Ballet company then performed La Valse.

From the Associated Press By  JAKE COYLE    Link to Full Article

NEW YORK (AP) — Fifty years after “Jaws” sunk its teeth into us, we’re still admiring the bite mark.

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 film, his second feature, left such a imprint on culture and Hollywood that barely any trip to the movies, let alone to the beach, has been the same since.

Few films have been more perfectly suited to their time and place than “Jaws,” which half a century ago unspooled across the country in a then-novel wide release accompanied by Universal Pictures’ opening-weekend publicity blitz. “Jaws” wasn’t quite the first movie to try to gobble up moviegoers whole, in one mouthful (a few years earlier, “The Godfather” more or less tried it), but “Jaws” established — and still in many ways defines — the summer movie.

That puts “Jaws” at the birth of a trend that has since consumed Hollywood: the blockbuster era. When it launched in 409 theaters on June 20, 1975, and grossed a then-record $7.9 million in its first days, “Jaws” set the template that’s been followed ever-after by every action movie, superhero flick or dinosaur film that’s tried to go big in the summer — a sleepy time in theaters before “Jaws” came around.

And yet the “Jaws” legacy is so much more than being Hollywood’s ur-text blockbuster. It’s not possible to, 50 years later, watch Spielberg’s film and see nothing but the beginning of a box-office bonanza, or the paler fish it’s inspired. It’s just too good a movie — and too much unlike so many wannabes since –— to be merely groundbreaking. It’s a masterpiece in its own right.

Every time I rewatch “Jaws” — which I highly recommend doing on some projected screen, even a bedsheet, and preferably with an ocean nearby — I marvel at how much it gets from its Martha’s Vineyard setting.

Spielberg was convinced the adaptation of Peter Benchley’s novel — inspired by Benchley’s childhood summers on Nantucket — shouldn’t be done in soundstages. After looking up and down the Atlantic coast, he settled on Nantucket’s neighboring island. Like his first film, the Mojave Desert-set “Duel,” Spielberg wanted his mechanized shark to swim in a real, definable place.

“I felt the same way about ‘Jaws,’” Spielberg says in the documentary. “I wanted to go to the natural environment so there was some kind of verisimilitude. So it needed to be in the ocean, out to sea.”

It wasn’t easy. The budget for “Jaws” nearly tripled to $9 million and the shoot extended from 55 to 159 days. Spielberg would never again be under financial pressure on a picture, but the tortured “Jaws” production put him under a microscope. An AP report from 1975 began: “It is news when a 26-year-old film director goes $2 million over budget and two and a half months over schedule and manages to avoid getting fired.”

More than any other time in his career, Spielberg fretted.

“‘Jaws’ was my Vietnam,” he told Richard Schickel. “It was basically naive people against nature and nature beat us every day.”

It also infused every inch of the frame with smalltown New England flavor in the way Escapism with something to say

On the one hand, “Jaws” had little to do directly with its times. The Vietnam War had just ended. Watergate had just led to the resignation of President Nixon. The heart-stopping story of a shark off the Massachusetts shoreline promised escapism.

Yet “Jaws” has endured as a parable of capitalism, pulled out time and time again to illustrate those endlessly repeating clashes of cash versus social safety.

“Amity is a summer town,” says Amity’s mayor, Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) in the film. “We need summer dollars.”

The shark gets the theme song and the movie poster, but the real villain of “Jaws” wears a pinstripe suit and smiles for the cameras. “As you can see, it’s a beautiful day and the beaches are open,” he says. More than the predator in the ocean, he, and the town, feast on human flesh.

‘Jaws’ is untouchable

There are boatloads of movies — including the three sequels that followed after — that have tried in vain to capture some of the magic of “Jaws.” But what happened in June 1975, let alone on Martha’s Vineyard the year before, isn’t repeatable. Even the greatest movies are products of a thousand small miracles. That title? Benchley came up with it minutes before going to print. The iconic poster came from Roger Kastel’s painting for the book. Scheider, for instance, learned about the movie by overhearing Spielberg at a party. Williams relied on just two notes for one of the most widely known film scores in movie history.

But no ingredient mattered more on “Jaws” than the man behind the camera. Filmmaking talents like Spielberg come around maybe a couple times a century, and in “Jaws,” he emerged, spectacularly. What’s maybe most striking about “Jaws” 50 years later is how much it still doesn’t look like anything else.

Jake Coyle has been writing about movies for the AP since 2013. He’s seen “Jaws” at least a dozen times, and screened it for his kids when they were debatably too young for it.

https://apnews.com/author/jake-coyle