In June of 1951 CBS made history by presenting an hour long program with 16 stars that performed song, dance, and comedy routines, and better yet it was in COLOR. Before that night television was an entirely black and white medium. Viewers had heard that Loucille Ball's hair was red, but due to black and white television this wasn't something the viewers could see. Television was now truly changing colors.
Like the telephone before it and the internet today television arrived gradually. That television broadcast of June 1951 was hyped as a television technology breakthrough, but there were flaws. There was a mysterious red ring around Ed Sullivan's ear and viewers questioned the true
tone of Faye Emerson's blonde chignon. There was an even bigger problem though, not everyone had color televisions.
Very few people actually watched that first broadcast because their black and white T.V's could not receive the signal. To ensure that the event wasn't totally lost CBS invited small audiences to watch the variety program in 35 different television studios across the east coast. Meanwhile 1000 people had to retrofit their sets to receive the signal.
By 1949 there were one million television sets in America, and ten years later color television increased that number by 50. In the 1960's colored television became ultimatley popular. By the 1980's about half of all of the television sets in America were
colored.
colored.
6 comments:
Not bad, Kyle. Nice pictures, but links are required. Especially to websites whose words you take without attribution.
Before I read this, I didn't know much about color tv,this blog helps me to know more about how color tv came out to the public.
Kyle I like the work you put into doing this blog and I like the pictures you put up. Like Steve, I did not know how the color tv came about but reading this helped me realize how it came to be and how it started out in black and white color.
Great Job Kyle! I never thought about the color in Loucille Ball's hair. I can't even imagine watching a show on the picture of the television you have there, but dang, definitely glad Televisions have evolved.
I like the background you give about color television Kyle. I think that the flaws from the first broadcast show how color television had to advance gradually. I can't imagine TV today without color and I have never thought about not knowing hair colors because I know what many of the actors look like in most of the black and white shows that I have seen.
Great job, Kyle. It was really interesting to learn about the first color television show. I can't believe that most people didn't even watch it because their televisions didn't receive the color signals. It was also interesting to know that most people didn't know that Loucille Ball's hair was red before color television!
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