Spockvarietyhour: Posts tagged television

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Teleavia P 111 design by Roger Tallon (1963)

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Color television logos used by the three major American networks from the mid-1960s to the early-1970s. The voice-over phrases the networks devised to accompany these logos and each network’s unique broadcast history transitioning from black and white television to color are detailed below. Also included is the history of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color (aka: The Wonderful World of Disney), which played an integral part in the advancement of color television across all three networks, one of which the Walt Disney Corporation first started broadcasting on, abandoned for greener pastures, and now owns today.

“𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐢𝐧 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐁𝐂.”
NBC started broadcasting a few shows in color in 1954, with the sitcom entitled The Marriage (starring real-life couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy) broadcasting all eight episodes live and in color between July 8th and August 19th, 1954, earning the series the distinction of being the first to achieve this milestone. The first NBC series to be filmed and broadcast in color was Norby starring David Wayne, with all thirteen episodes airing between January 5th, 1955 and April 6th, 1955. The network also featured a live color broadcast of the then new Broadway musical Peter Pan starring Mary Martin in 1955. The Tonight Show, then hosted by Jack Paar before Johnny Carson took over for thirty years in 1962, began taping in color on September 19th, 1960, though very few complete episodes that aired prior to 1973 are in existence today due to NBC’s practice of re-using videotapes to tape other shows (the only existing Paar shows are black and white kinescopes). Many of NBC’s prime time series were broadcast in color by 1963, with 95% of the network’s shows switching to the format by 1965, though I Dream of Jeannie didn’t start filming and airing in color until the show’s second season in 1966 in order to give the special effects department time to develop Jeannie’s neon pink puffs of smoke and other colorful visual effects. In another historical first for the network, the long-running daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives became the first afternoon soap to be broadcast in color when NBC debuted the series in November of 1965.

“𝐂𝐁𝐒 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫.”
CBS began broadcasting color shows in 1953 (the first American network to do so), and they continued to air specials in color like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella (1957) starring Julie Andrews and the first television showing of the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz. However, because the process they were using was developed by RCA (NBC’s parent company), further development of color programming on CBS was stalled until the network could come up with another system. The first CBS series to start filming in color was The Lucy Show during it’s second season in 1963 (at the insistence of the show’s producer and star, Lucille Ball), though the episodes continued to be broadcast by CBS in black and white until 1965 (Ball, a shrewd and forward-thinking businesswoman, saw the value of having color episodes in future syndicated re-runs of her series, which is when the episodes filmed for seasons two and three of The Lucy Show were ultimately viewed for the first time in color). By the start of the fall season in 1966, all of CBS’s prime time schedule began airing in color, including the first seasons of Star Trek and Mission: Impossible, both of which were developed and produced by Lucille Ball during her tenure as president and sole owner of Desilu Productions. Gilligan’s Island began airing in color at the start of its second season the year before, as had the fourth season of The Beverly Hillbillies. The Munsters, which ended its two year run on CBS in 1966, was originally conceived as a color series (the first of two pilot episodes was shot in color), but in order to hasten the makeup application process the cast endured, save money, and replicate the dreary grey atmosphere of classic horror movies, the actual series was filmed in black and white (Munster, Go Home, a feature film adapted from the series and released in theaters in 1966, was conversely shot in Technicolor). The Addams Family television series, which aired on competing network ABC from 1964 to 1966, was also filmed in black and white for similar reasons.

“𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐁𝐂 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.”
Slow out of the gate (based on the financial reasoning that it was better to wait for more American homes to acquire color television sets), ABC began broadcasting some shows in color in 1962, mainly the cartoon series The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Beany and Cecil. Half of ABC’s prime time schedule was broadcast in color by 1965. Starting in the fall of 1966, all of ABC’s prime time series were filmed and broadcast in color, including the third season of Bewitched starring Elizabeth Montgomery and the first season of That Girl starring Marlo Thomas. The first season of the classic Batman television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward was also aired in color by the network; launching as a mid-season replacement series in January of 1966, Batman beat Bewitched and That Girl in the color stakes by eight months. It’s of interest to note that Walt Disney’s first television anthology series (now commonly known as The Wonderful World of Disney, but initially entitled Walt Disney’s Disneyland and Walt Disney Presents) switched from ABC (where it ran for seven seasons beginning in 1954) to NBC in 1961 so that the show could be broadcast in color, which ABC was not yet equipped to do. Re-titled Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color for its first eight seasons, the series ran on NBC for twenty years until 1981, then bounced around on the three main networks until landing back at ABC in 1987. Disney ultimately purchased the ABC television network in 1995, and still owns the broadcasting company today.