Check out our recent publication Color Mania. The shows that didn't last very long, by the way, are in light gray. is a comprehensive resource for the investigation of film color technology and aesthetics, analysis and restoration, developed and curated by Barbara Flueckiger since 2012. Here's a timeline of what we came up with. (Our criteria: The show had to be on a network - and we're counting PBS here.) We asked folks on Twitter and Facebook to scan their memories and help us compile as many notable prime-time sitcoms featuring families of color as we could. To get at this question, we decided to make a list. So how much browner is today's TV landscape of sitcoms compared with the television offerings from a decade - or two, or five - ago? And Esther Breger called this season the "most diverse in recent TV history."īut as we pointed out a few weeks ago, back in 1974, three sitcoms featuring black families were at the top of the charts. We've heard some of the same comments a lot about this fall's television lineup, which includes the shows Black-ish, Cristela, Selfie and Fresh Off the Boat: "Why is diversity all the rage now?" asked Robert Rorke of the New York Post. (Tomorrow, we will feature part two of this story on the history of color television.Code Switch The Pre-Huxtable Golden Age Of The Black Family Sitcom By the end of ’60s, the black and white era was over. During this period, sales of color television sets finally took off. The year 1966 also signaled NBC’s switch to an all-color network. Here it found an audience and became a huge hit - lasting a total of 14 seasons.įrom 1964 to 1967, Bonanza was the single most-watched television program in America. Kept alive simply because it was in color, the show was moved after its first two seasons to Sunday nights. At first Bonanza aired on Saturday nights, where it bombed in the ratings. Shot on location in the scenic Lake Tahoe area, this NBC western was filmed in color to showcase parent RCA’s compelling new technology. The first episode of Bonanza aired on Sept. However, to baby boomers and their parents, one show would come to define the move to color television. The first color cartoons, the Flintstones and the Jetsons, began in the fall of 1962. Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color began in 1961. The tide began to turn in the early ’60s, after about half a million color sets had been sold. Those indelible images from the Kennedy assassination in November 1963 - 10 years after the Rose parade colorcast - were still in black and white. Yankees in September 1955).Įven with these special broadcasts, it would be a long time before most Americans experienced color television in their living rooms.
Color tv timelime series#
Other notable events were the first color broadcast of a president (Dwight Eisenhower in June 1955) and the first color broadcast of the World Series (Dodgers vs. Just before the inaugural live Rose Parade broadcast, the first filmed series to have a color episode aired was Dragnet in December 1953. In fact, any color program broadcast in the 1950s was a big event. Since only 31 stations in the United States had color capability, there wasn’t much to watch. Released the worlds first color TV with black stripe-type cathode-ray tubes. Nicknamed “the Merrill,” the RCA Model CT-100 had a 12-inch diagonal screen and cost a whopping $1,000 (well over $6,000 by today’s standards). The first consumer color television receivers hit the market a few weeks later, with 5,000 units rolling off the RCA assembly line in Bloomington, Ind., in March 1954. The idea was to build excitement about color TV, and that it did. Other manufacturers, wanting to enter the color TV business, also built their own prototypes for the occasion. For the occasion, RCA built a special run of only 200 color sets - designated the Model 5 (for prototype #5) -f or the NBC affiliates and RCA Victor TV retail distributors. Only a few thousand people actually saw the parade in color that day. The event, the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, was tailor-made to show off RCA’s brand new color television technology. NBC made history with the first live national broadcast in “living color” over a 22-city network hastily constructed by AT&T on New Year’s Day, 1954. This year is the 60th anniversary of color television.
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