HISTORY's Moments in Media: When Color TV Made the New Year an Event

It was broadcast on NBC then owned by RCA which was a pioneer of color TV and needed a reason for consumers to want to buy the pricey new setsThe network was so proud of the achievement it later made a newsreeltype video touting the accomplishment The voiceover was triumphantly poetic quotColorquot it announced quotthe fabric of the rainbow riding piggyback on an invisible stream of electronsquotThe first ideas for color television stretched back to the early days of the 20th century After World War II CBS researchers developed a mechanical color TV system that was approved by the FCC as the national standard in 1950 But the CBS system was expensive to make offered bad picture quality and perhaps most important wasn39t compatible with existing blackandwhite TV sets CBS began broadcasting in color from a handful of East Coast stations in 1951 but RCA which had manufactured half of the 10 million or so blackandwhite sets then in use sued to stop them Eventually the Supreme Court upheld the FCC39s decision to permit the broadcasts By 1953 RCA scientists had developed an electronic color system that also allowed color programs to be viewed on blackandwhite sets The FCC approved RCA39s system as the color TV standard on December 17 1953Few people must have seen the Tournament of Roses Parade broadcast with that full fabric of the rainbow because the first color TVs with the new RCA standard went on sale only the day before on December 30 1953 Those first sets prototypes rushed to stores had a 15inch screen but they allowed retailers to host viewing parties for the color broadcast from Pasadena distributed to 21 NBC stations across the country via a special network on ATampampT39s longdistance linesWhen the RCA color set the CT100 went on sale later that year each cost 1000amp160 nearly 10000 todayamp160A competitive color model introduced that year the Admiral C1617A cost 1175 RCA promised a bigger 17inch screen later in that yearEven as costs inevitably decreased color television took a surprisingly long time to fully take hold NBC was the leader in driving color programming because its parent RCA stood to benefit from color set sales but in the summer of 1954 New York residents with a color TV could watch only one color show In 1956 486 hours of color programs were aired across the three networks There are 780 prime time hours on a single network in one year Not until 1964 was color dominant on network TV And only in 1966 did NBC become the first network to introduce all of its new programs in colorIn 1972 for the first time more color TVs were sold than blackandwhite sets And by 1992 an electronic industry trade group estimated that 20 million color TVs would be sold in the United States that year versus 1 million blackandwhite sets Most had small screens and prisons were the primary customersLater in the 1990s Americans began switching to HDTV television not just color but highdefinition color And on January 1 1999 the Tournament of Roses Parade was for the first time broadcast in HD the firstever HD Super Bowlamp160broadcast would come at the end of that month Decades after its color debut on NBC that HD Tournament of Roses Parade aired on KTLA an affiliate of The CWClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNetamp160

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HISTORY's Moments in Media: When Color TV Made the New Year an Event

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