Pinky Lee Collapses on Live Television, September 20, 1955

Frenetic, surreal, careless, and grotesque...these are just a few words to describe The Pinky Lee Show. Critics of children's television in the early 1950's were alarmed, and while parents and children welcomed Pinky Lee into their living rooms, it is hard to imagine that anyone would allow the checkered, silly clown through their front doors. This was not the gentle sophistication of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, but crass production geared toward selling children's products.

The show itself was heavily adlibbed, and the super-kinetic pace kept children's attention; but, the lack of studied scripting allowed questionable content to air live across the nation, and in the prime schedule spot just prior to The Howdy Doody Show. Divided into short, fast-take segments, the show featured sketches, audience interaction, and music. One episode featured a children's song promoting playing with scissors, while another performance featured a ditty about girls hearing wedding bells. Intermingled with this was Pinky Lee's lap sitting with the kids and rapid-fire product placement, such as the Miss Sweet Sue Doll and Pinky Lee's own merchandise, such as Pinky Lee shoelaces and the Pinky doll.

The show, however, was nearly as popular as Howdy Doody, and millions of children adored Pinky's antics and parents adored his baby sitting services. Then came the day that horrified children for years to come. The author of Classic Kids TV perhaps states it best:

One of my most vivid memories from my earliest days of TV watching is the day that I watched the live broadcast of the Pinky Lee Show when Pinky Lee appeared to have a heart attack right in front of his studio audience and millions of young, impressionable at-home viewers.
On the day in question, I was sitting on the living-room floor watching the show as my mother was in the kitchen.   I think it was at some point near the end of the show when Pinky suddenly stopped singing and running around and clutched his chest, looking straight at the camera, and said something like “Somebody please help me” before he keeled over onto the floor.   I think the camera stayed on the empty spot where Pinky had been standing for a few seconds, and then the TV went blank.  I remember running breathlessly into the kitchen and wailing at my mother, “Mommy, Pinky Lee fell down!  Pinky Lee fell down!” before I burst into tears.  

Indeed, children were stunned, and parents too...and as they tuned in the following day, there was still no Pinky. Nor the following day, or the next. Pinky Lee's collapse from acute nasal problems kept him off the air for a year and a half, instantly ending the popular live broadcast. Rumors abounded that Pinky had died of a heart attack. Ironically, when Pinky finally returned to TV - as host of the new Gumby and Pokey Show, his short run ended quickly on November 16, 1957, soon after he did have a heart attack. Fortunately, this time not on television, but Pinky's career never recovered to the heights of his short-lived heyday in the mid-1950s

RadioVision, April 17, 1927

Television pioneer Charles Francis Jenkins is credited with several early broadcasts on the east coast, and on April 17th (some sources credit the date as April 9, 1927), arranged the first city to city television transmissions - or as Jenkins called it, radiovision - of a conversation with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover. With a mock studio set up in a Washington DC funeral parlor, Hoover - who had been receiving as much press as President Coolidge due to his radio broadcasts about the thriving U.S. economy - spoke with AT&T president Walter Gifford and was transmitted through the phone companies lines:

Hoover: It is a matter of just pride to have a part in this historic occassion. We have long been familiar with the electrical transmission of sound. Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight, for the first time in the world’s history.

Gifford: The elaborateness of the equipment precludes the possibility of television being available in homes or businesses generally, What its practical use may be, I will leave to your imaginations. As well as being displayed on a small screen, the images are shown on an array of lamps three feet high and two feet wide.

Hoover: Today we have, in a sense, the transmission of sight for the first time in the world’s history. Human genius has now destroyed the impediment of distance in a new respect, and in a manner hitherto unknown. All we can say today is that there has been created a marvelous agency for whatever use the future may find with the full realization that every great and fundamental discovery of the past has been followed by use far beyond the vision of its creator.

The telecast was transmitted from Washington DC to New York, and New Jersey, and 200 miles away in an AT&T laboratory, 60 men watched the first talking images transmitted over phone lines between multiple cities. The New York Times was jubilant about the event, writing "It was fun as if a photograph had suddenly come to life and begun to talk, smile, nod its head and look this way and that..."

The broadcast, however, includes the earliest transmission of tasteless, inappropriate television, as comedian A. Dolan, appeared in black face and spoke with a stereotypical dialect. Unfortunately, this proved more prophetic than Hoover's speech about the future and direction of television programming.

Charles Francis Jenkins first began working with the transmission of "electric pictures in 1894." His pioneering work continued his entire career; however, he represents the incongruities of early broadcasts and competing systems. In the end, Jenkins mechanical method of television lost to electronic broadcasts, but he did establish the first television station, W3XK (located in Wheaton, Maryland) and accomplished the sell of several thousand television receivers along the east coast. He, like Philo Farnsworth, was gobbled up the the behemoth RCA in the early 1930s.

http://inventors.about.com/od/ijstartinventors/a/Radiovision.htm

http://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/Hooverstory/gallery04/gallery04.html

End of An Era: June 12, 2009

Not really an entry, just something eerie and hauntingly final about this clip, the last 2 minutes of the final analog broadcast in the United States. This final broadcast is from New York's WNBC, which began experimental broadcasting in 1928 (as W2XBS) and began commercial broadcasts July 1, 1941 with a baseball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Phillies. The station covered news of the bombing at Pearl Harbor and the end of the World War II in 1945. The station changed call letters in 1954 to WRCA, then to WNBC in 1960.

The station signed off analog for the switch to digital broadcasting near midnight on June 12, 2009, but remained on air for a few weeks longer with specially televised informational programs explaining the switch from analog to digital, then signed off again for the very final time two weeks later. The two week extension made it the very last station across the country to broadcast in analog, and 81 years of history came to a close. WNBC, like some other stations across the country, created closing graphics to signify the switch.

Icon Preservation: The NBC Peacock LogoFirst aired 1956 and December 1957

The single greatest example of branding in television history, the NBC Peacock first premiered in 1956. It was the creation of graphic designer John J. Graham. It came to represent NBC as the "Peacock Network" with the slogan Proud as a Peacock and was introduced to signify the networks significant work toward the popularity of color television. NBC, owned by RCA, had a great stake in color television, and while CBS and ABC only dabbled with the new color medium, NBC produced the major milestones in colorcasts - no doubt to energize the public and produce sales of RCA color television receivers. The initial broadcasts of the new color logo was in 1956 and was simply a still. The animated logo of the peacock spreading its color feathers premiered in December of 1957. The color logo replaced NBC's chime logo, a 3 chord xylophone illustration with a three tone audio, which premiered in color in 1954.

NBC requested the new logo from Graham with the call to create something that excited viewers about color and encourage television sales, and one that clearly indicated color when even viewed in black and white. The logo's success changed the image of NBC, promoting superior, colorful programming and is still used by the network today. It is one of the greatest examples of corporate branding, ranking up there with the McDonald's "M" arches and Coca Cola.

In 1959, Graham also created the "snake logo," to be used at the end of a program broadcast on NBC, and periodically, the network attempted to phase out the peacock logo, but by 1980, the network fully embraced the classic trademark and its importance. It has continuously been used since.

1956 Pre-Peacock Logo & First Peacock Logo (Non-animated)











1957


1960s


1970s


1980s


1990s


The NBC Snake Logo



NBC's Unsuccessful, 1977 Attempt to Drop the Peacock Logo

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie - The Color Show, August 30, 1953

RCA, the parent company to NBC, needed the perfect show to launch their new NTSC (a branch of the FCC) approved color system. Certainly, hits like Dragnet, Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater, or Your Show of Shows could provide colorful excitement to the medium, RCA realized Kukla, Fran, and Ollie provided every element needed. It was a simple show, with very few objects and a small set that required very little camera movement. Also, being an afternoon telecast, this color experiment would survive the tough scrutiny that would come with bigger fare. And most importantly, the huge ratings promised the viewers and promotion needed to kick off their fresh campaign to excite viewers and advertisers about color programming.

Thus, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was chosen for this monumental television moment. It was one of the biggest hits in all of television in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Though a daytime show, its ratings were comparable to top primetime blockbusters like Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle and Toast of the Town with Ed Sullivan. At its peak, the show received 18,000 letters a week. The show was, indeed, unique for a children's show. Both children and adults were fans of the show; and, among its many fans were Tallulah Bankhead, Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, Thornton Wilder, Lillian Gish and Adlai Stevenson. The large net of fans was due to the show's approach. The characters were given depth and continuity. In fact, much of the humor arose from knowing the history or the characters and episodes. It took a few shows for viewer to get hooked, but then...hooked they were.

RCA and NBC began heavy on-air promotion about the experimental colorcast to peak viewer and advertister interest. Interestingly, almost no one had color sets as the FCC was still a few months from officially declaring the NTSC (National Television System Committee) adopted system of color telecasting. The few that could view the experimental color system had close ties to RCA and NBC, such as advertisers and studio executives. While adults may have understood the concept, many kids did not - and understandably so!

The much publicized episode was a special event for the program. Filmed in a New York theater, and with the musical accompaniment of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie cast and crew recreated a grander episode from June, St. George and the Dragon, based on the classic myth and its many incarnations. As children, excited from the long promotion and build-up to the telecast, gathered around the televisions, their wound-up anticipation deflated to disappointment. As documented in Larry Brody's book, Turning Points in Television:

NBC announced that August 30, 1953 was going to be its big day, bringing color to Kuklapolitan fans. Man, was I ready. My mother and sister and I sat down to watch the show, and lo and behold - we saw what we'd always seen: Kukla trying to solve the latest problem....oh yes, they also talked about the fact that they were in color and how exciting it was......for us, everything was black and white and various shades of gray. As it had always been. As it would always be until my family shelled out for a new RCA color TV set...To say I was disappointed is to understate the case. I was devastated. I was so upstet that I refused to watch Kukla, Fran, and Ollie again. At least until the next week.

Undoubtedly, confused kids across the nation were just as dismayed, but for NBC, the experiment worked. The increased interest in color jump started the process (again), and by January, 1954, all the loose ends were thread together and the industry (networks, manufacturers, and the FCC) began the slow, "spectacular" process of color. The first official color broadcast, after the FCC adopted the new system a few months later occurred on December 17, 1953 when NBC broadcast the first colorcast of the NBC "Chimes" logo (at 5:31:17 P.M.)



Notes: A rarity in live television, over 700 kinescope individual episodes are preserved in Chicago. Also of interest, the first color broadcast by a network was also Kukla, Fran, and Ollie - from a fall, 1949 episode that was used as an in-house test by RCA.



Sources:

Saturday Morning TV by Gary H. Grossman

Kukla TV

http://kukla.tv/colorgeorge.html


http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/09/14770


http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia/Kukla,-Fran-and-Ollie

Turning Points In Television

http://community-2.webtv.net/stevetek/StevesCT100/