Week of June 12: The Last Conversion

This from the Christian Science Monitor:



Eight million owners of television sets want to know if their sets are obsolete. Many more millions of potential owners, facing a new 10 percent federal tax starting Nov. 1, want to know if they should buy now.


That isn't a recent article about analog vs. digital television sets. That sentence was from a 1950 article, when the talk was about television going from black-and-white to color.

On this day when analog television says goodbye, it's good to think back to a time when another television conversion was taking place. It actually took about 15 years from the time that article was published for a complete conversion on the three American television networks.

NBC was actually the first to start broadcasting in color, with specials during the 1950s. Dancer Fred Astaire filmed a couple of specials for the network in color. Of course, the famous NBC Peacock came about to show viewers that "The following program is brought to you in living color." (Comedian Bob Hope, who spent more than half a century with the network, later joked that "the peacock was hatched from an egg I laid.")

CBS would go to a full-color schedule in the fall of 1966. As an experiment, during the 1965-66 season, the network had all of its programs air an episode in color, including the long-running "Perry Mason." The show that starred Raymond Burr as the celebrated lawyer was actually cancelled after that season, but the episode, an Oliver Twist-takeoff called "The Tale of the Twice Told Twist," is available on the special DVD that commemorates the 50th anniversary of the series. (Check local stores or online.)

ABC would also go full-color during the mid-1960s. Well, almost. As late as the early 1970s, newscasts on the then-third-place network were still in black-and-white.

Here's a link to an interesting page with information and videos on the black-and-white to color transition:

http://www.ev1.pair.com/colorTV/colorTVlogos.html

Hope your digital transition is going smoothly!

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TV Guide has come out with its list of the 100 greatest television episodes, guaranteed to generate more than 100 arguments (including a few from this corner). So tune in next week for Rabbit Ears' Top 10 Television Episodes of all time.

Until then, Happy Viewing!