Color TV In Our Days

Tommy Towery

LHS '64

Do you know that one of the questions raised to people in our generation was "Where Were You When President Kennedy Was Shot? It seems a defining for us. Another question I often hear asked is "Where did you first see color TV?"

In 1941, the first NTSC meetings produced a single standard for US broadcasts. US television broadcasts began in earnest in the immediate post-war era, and by 1950 there were 6 million televisions in the United States. Although all-electronic color was introduced in the US in 1953, high prices and the scarcity of color programming greatly slowed its acceptance in the marketplace. The first national color broadcast (the 1954 Tournament of Roses Parade) occurred on 1 January 1954. It was not until the mid-1960s that color sets started selling in large numbers, due in part to the color transition of 1965 in which it was announced that over half of all network prime-time programming would be broadcast in color that autumn. 

NBC was at the forefront of color programming because its parent company RCA manufactured the most successful line of color sets in the 1950s and, at the end of August 1956, announced that in comparison with 1955–56 (when only three of its regularly scheduled programs were broadcast in color) the 1956–57 season would feature 17 series in color.

A 1965 American Research Bureau (ARB) study that proposed an emerging trend in color television set sales convinced NBC that a full shift to color would gain a ratings advantage over its two competitors. As a result, NBC provided the catalyst for rapid color expansion by announcing that its prime-time schedule for fall 1965 would be almost entirely in color. ABC and CBS followed suit and over half of their combined prime-time programming also moved to color that season, but they were still reluctant to telecast all their programming in color due to production costs. All three broadcast networks were airing full-color prime-time schedules by the 1966–67 broadcast season, and ABC aired its last new black-and-white daytime programming in December 1967.

So I ask myself: "When did you first see a color TV? 

My Brother Don, my mother Dolores, and me in the living room at 505 East Clinton beside the family TV .

I suppose some of you will remember the little "plastic" screen you could put over your black and white TV screen and make the picture color. It had a Blue band at the top (where there were some blue skies, a redish (more normal) band in the center and a grass-colored green band at the bottom. It only really worked a bit when it was an outdoor landscape scene. 

I don't remember having a working TV in my house until after I started at East Clinton Elementary School. When we finally got a TV set, my family bought one of those screens. I know it did not last long in our house, but have no idea where it went. 

But, I digress. The first color TV set I saw was sometime during the Christmas Holiday, and it was set up at Miracle City down on South Parkway. I remember I had gone to get some stuff for a road trip and I saw this whole gang smashed together like sardines. Being the curious sole I was, I wandered over there to see what was so important. And there, sitting in front of the crowd was a 21" Color Television featuring some level of a football game. The colored uniforms stood out easily on the green grass field. Previously all football games that were shown on television in a black-and-white mode. It seemed supernatural to actually see the colors the teams wore. I cannot remember the price of the set but I will always remember the magic of color TV. So to answer my own question, my first color TV exposure was a football game at Miracle City.

No one tried to answer my quesstion about the Lee teacher who was sometimes called Zorro. It was Mr. Fox, and the Spanish word for the animal called fox in our English was known as Zorro in the Hispanic language.

The following four email addresses were returned to be as being undeliver. Please update if you can.

 bevstill@comcast.net

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Remember to use the comment section below to tell about your first color tv sighting.

Last Week's Questions, Answers, 

And Comments

Rick Markley, LHS ‘66, "Tyrone Power, Mark of Zorro, 1940. Best Zorro ever!"

Mary Ann Wallace, LHS '64, "Another great newsletter.  I love and am so impressed that we have members of our classes of LHS who have published books.  It was really special to hear them talk about their publications.  I am really impressed.  Thanks for asking that other people let us know about their books."