I'm not quite old enough to clearly remember the point at which my family got a color TV, and suddenly not everything was in black-and-white. But my guess is that anyone a couple of years older than me or more (I'm about to turn 55) has a clear memory of that moment.
Here, then, is a tape from my own family's home-recorded collection (a large set of tapes by the way, one which no doubt set me on the road to collection those made by other families).
The tape dates from the first week of August, 1966 (the ability to date it so closely will be mentioned below), and features me older brother recording with a friend of his. This was his common practice, and became mine, with my friends, as I grew a little older. My brother (Bill) is heard here at 12 years old, his friend about the same. We'd had a color TV for some time, but the friend (Steve) had apparently yet to see TV in color.
Essentially, this tape captures segments of about six minutes of broadcasting (with much cut due to the recorder being turned off and on), including bits of a game show, a newscast and commercials, as well as what anyone seeing TV in color for the first time in 1966 would want to see most, the NBC Peacock.
If you can get past the constant noise from handling of the microphone, and the various inanities and noises made by 12 year old boys, this is a neat little time capsule in just under four minutes.
Some specific highlights:
- at 0:13: "Ooh, it's a color TV? I wanna see a color TV"
- at 0:29 (and again at 1:02): Moments from the original incarnation of "The Match Game"
- at 039: an ad for New Era Potato Chips and a subsequent discussion of them by the boys
- at 1:27: the original Match Game theme (aka "A Swingin' Safari"). An indelible, wonderful tune and record, and still my favorite game show theme song ever.
- at 2:01: easily my favorite moment here - a comment in response to a "Girl from U.N.C.L.E." ad.
- at 2.06: Bill expresses his absolute hatred for the show "Occasional Wife". His strong reaction is odd, given that the show won't debut for another five weeks.
- starting at 2:34: here's a neat discussion, with regard to something I'd forgotten. The UHF channels (at least those in Chicago), didn't necessarily have shows that ran hour-to-hour. If a show ended at 2:40, the channel went dead until the next show started at 3 PM. Steve wants to see a UHF channel in color, but neither Chicago UHF station seems to be broadcasting. There is a weak signal from Indiana (Bill says we also could get Milwaukee), but it's mostly just sound. The Chicago stations will likely start up again at 3, but Bill wants to get back to NBC for the peacock.
- at 3:12: "that's Nancy Dickerson?" Also, whoever is reporting is talking about the recent University of Texas Tower Shootings of August 1st, which give us an approximate date for this tape.
- at 3:36: at last, the NBC Peacock.
I hope you enjoy this neat little nugget of television history, as experienced in the suburbs of Chicago.
August is usually a good time for tropospheric propagation on UHF, so it's not surprising you'd've been getting signals from Indiana (possibly S. Bend or Bloomington-Indianapolis) & Milwaukee. When I lived in Cicero, Ill. in the late 1970s-80 I DXed TV. What is surprising is getting sound only. Most broadcast stations tended to put more power into their video than their aural signal. However, it may be that your receiver had greater sensitivity to the audio carrier. The color subcarrier would've required a good deal of strength of signal, so you probably wouldn't've seen color from those DX stns. anyway.
Was the UHF tuner built-in? It would've been if the set was made in 1965 or 1966. Before then, I'm not sure whether in the Chi. market most receivers would've required a UHF converter or they were built-in. In NYC there wasn't enough audience interest in the local UHF stations for sets to come with it until Congress required them starting in 1965, but it's possible that in Chi. there was. The converters were essentially the same as those used to down-convert the educational ITFS (terrestrial microwave) signals to a locally open channel on the VHF receiver. I had (think I still have somewhere) instructions from Popular Electronics to build one, but it would've required metal work because it relied on a custom-built element that looked like a pair of bookends, combining capacitance (between them) with inductance (thru them), which would've been insignificant below UHF freqs.
Posted by: (Listener) Robert | June 14, 2015 at 12:58 PM
The best part is when Bill goes off on Occasional Wife.
Posted by: Timmy | June 14, 2015 at 04:11 PM
I just noticed -- collecting tapes made by other families? Hey, were you the Professor of The Audio Kitchen?
Posted by: (Listener) Robert | June 14, 2015 at 07:10 PM
Hi, Robert!
Thanks for the detailed comment. I would put money on it that we got our TV in '65 or '66, and I'm sure it was a Zenith. There were only two UHF channels in Chicago for years, and tuning was hit or miss. I can remember my dad occasionally tuning in a Milwaukee station to watch Black Hawks games, because the ownership of the team famously blacked out home games for years, for whatever reason.
Thanks again!
Bob
Posted by: Bob Purse | June 15, 2015 at 02:14 PM
Hi again, Robert and also Timmy,
I am not "The professor", but I thank you for bringing this up, Robert, because I'd never actually heard of that before, and now I have a whole bunch of neat stuff to listen to!
And Timmy, I love that moment, too - what was he basing that hatred on? The 10 second promos that would have been airing a month before the show's debut?
Bob
Posted by: Bob Purse | June 15, 2015 at 02:18 PM
Growing up in Fort Worth in the 60's, there was no channel 2 or 3 within 100+ miles. With the antenna aimed ESE at Cedar Hill, channel 2 and 3 were frequently lit up with F skip from Florida in the spring/summer. WESH and WEDU came through many times, with WESH in color. I have a QSL card from WESH from the 60's. I logged about twenty other channel 2's over the years in the 60's from there.
If you'd like to see color videotape from 1958, look at this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUTKl_z9474
Posted by: David Crosthwait | July 13, 2015 at 11:38 AM