Color TV brand popularity - 1960's

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

whirlcool

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 29, 2005
Messages
9,618
Location
Just North Of Houston, Texas
Back in the mid 60's when everyone it seemed was buying their first color TV and the networks started full time color programming what brands of television were most common in your area?
I was living in the suburbs of Chicago at the time and based on what I saw my friends parents and relatives had was as follows:

1. RCA or Zenith. Almost an even split. Lots of those around.
2. Admiral - Lots of those too.
3. Magnavox - Not nearly as common as the other brands, but there were a few of
them about. My aunt had one which caught fire one night about a year
after they bought it!
4. Motorola - a few around, not very common.
5. GE - Only knew one family with one of these. You didn't really see a lot of them
in the appliance stores either. But in the late 60's a lot of people
bought the GE Porta-Color sets. Could low sales of GE Color television be
due to the radiation scare GE had with their sets around 1966 or so?

And that was about it.

 
Our 1st color tv was a 25inch Sylvania console. Had automatic color button, the picture was great along with the colors. We had an antenna with a rotor and could recieve quite a few stations. Back in the 60's we were a testing city for cable tv. we got that about a year after the tv, so that was probably like 1966 or 68.
What I thought was really strange is that the cabinet was made out of metal to look like wood. Never saw another set like it since then.
Jon
 
What About Sears?

I think Sears should be included in that group. Like many Americans, my parents had a Sears charge card, and they purchased a 23-inch Silvertone color console in 1965. We were the first on the block to have a color set, and my sister and I suddenly became the most popular kids on the block. I suspect many Sears card households followed suit. You can't do better than Sears.
 
Seeing as Sears was based in the Chicago area you think you would have seen more.
But I never encountered a Silvertone color set anywhere besides the store. Were the Sears sets rebadged RCA's?

I remember around 1980 I wanted to buy a Sylvania set. A few people told me that they were very good. But I could not find ONE dealer in the Houston area. They still made sets at the time, but I can't remember if at that time is was the real Sylvania making their sets or some successor company?
 
Motorola!

In the fall of 1963, Motorola sprang something on the competetion that they were NOT expecting, revolutionizing the color tv industry,,Unbeknownst to the color giant RCA, who made ALL the color tubes up until that time, Motorola had secretly developed the first rectangular color tube, remember, before then, all color tubes were 21 inch round tubes, all made by RCA for the other companys, or under liscense from RCA, Motorolas 23 inch rectangular tube was a great breakthrough, then in 1968 the solid state Quasar by motorola was introduced, the first full sized solid state set, again , setting the pace for all others. The first Quasars had the "Works in a drawer" making the tv serviceable from the front.
 
Yes, Motorola rectangular tubes were a big seller in the 1960s. The works in a drawer were a big advancement, making the servicing easier, and more likely done in the customer's home. It was a lot easier to replace circuit boards, rather than carry a console TV back to the store. The first models still had a few vacuum tubes on the replacement boards, later changing to all solid state.

The screen on the inside of the picture tube had a black background, through which the red, blue, and green guns projected. Improved contrast and detail on these Motorolas. Then, Sony had the vertical in-line screens, also with a sharper picture.

I also remember that in the 1960s, as TV programs switched to color, the most difficult color to broadcast was yellow. I think that the show "Hazel" had her in a yellow uniform.
 
our first color set was a GE, but with a twist

By 1967 we were still a B&W family. I suppose our family could be characterized as upper middle class, my father was a dentist, etc. About half the families in the neighborhood had color by then (the USA hit 50% color ownership in the early 1970s). A 19 inch set cost about $500 back then, so it would be analogous to buying a $3000-5000 set today. My parents probably could afford it, but their priorities were that they themselves watched little TV (other than the news and "To Tell The Truth") and they encouraged us to spend time on homework, not tv.

As Allen/whirlcool suggested, the predominant color brands were RCA and Zenith. Some neighbors had a 21 or 23 inch Zenith cabinet model (with the round tube) and a Space Command remote that controlled not only volume and channels, but also color quality such as tint and intensity.

Our first color set was by accident. For years, Dad had been a not-so-active member of the Lions Club. I think he joined idealistically in the beginning and then became bored with it. Part of the problem may have been that he joined a chapter near his office, not near where we lived, so that the activities were benefiting the area around his office, but not his neighborhood. Anyway, he'd do the minimum service time needed per year to remain active, which usually meant working the club's Christmas tree lot each December (translation: PassatDoc worked the Christmas tree lot....).

Every year the chapter had a raffle. I'm guessing Dad bought $20 of tickets (probably his share of tickets to sell, but it was easier to buy his own share than to hawk them to others) and promptly forgot about it. He and I went to a minor league hockey game (San Diego Gulls) and when we return, mom said "We won a color tv!!"

Dad and I were incredulous and thought she was joking, like "who on earth would give US a color tv??" so she said, "go out to the garage and see for yourself." We went down (house built on a hill, garage at street level, 27 steps up the slope from street level to house, very common arrangement in hilly parts of San Diego) to the garage and peeked inside mom's Buick Sportwagon 400, and lo and behold, there was a tv AND matching cart. A 19" color table model GE set with a cart. The cart was nice because our den had built in bookcases that accommodated our existing 19" B&W set, but the color set was too deep to fit in the bookcase, so the cart avoided a furniture purchase.

We set it up and the first image I remember was the red and white checkerboard tablecloth of a Mrs Butterworth's Syrup ad. The set had an Automatic Color button but I found manual adjustments gave a better picture. The set didn't work well and had to be repaired several times. Finally in 1972 my parents bought a 19" or 21" inch table top Hitachi set (the first one they ever BOUGHT) for a reasonable $320 at a local discount store (the late, great Fedco) and the GE went to the dump.

The Hitachi, despite being mostly solid state, didn't hold out that much longer, by 1979 the picture was shot and we replaced it with a 19" MGA (as Mitsubishi was then known) which lasted until c. 1995-6. The replacement was a 25" Magnavox set (by now, tv's were square rather than rectangular) which just barely fit in the built-in wall cabinet (not the same house as the first tv and not the same bookcases). Anything larger would not have fit the cabinet, and even then we had to go shopping with a tape measure, as only some of the 25" models would fit.

This year, the Magnavox began making strange noises when turned OFF (but plugged in) so off it went to the e-waste county recycling program, and in its place now stands a 32" Vizio HDTV with WiFi, thank you Costco: only $350 on sale. I tried to find them a 37" set, but none of them had low enough vertical clearance to fit the cabinet. They love the set and are now using my Netflix account to watch movies, documentaries, etc.

So in 44 years, they've had five sets: 19" GE, 19" Hitachi, 19" MGA/Mitsubishi, 25" Magnavox, and now a 32" Vizio.

Allen, I do remember the GE PortaColor being a major price break, I believe it retailed for $199.98---the first color set under $200. When most other sets were $400+.
 
color programming before the mid-1960s...

....was limited. Sponsors didn't want to pony up the extra money required to reach a small segment of the market. Color ownership in the USA did not hit 50% of households until about 1972.

One notable exception was The Lucy Show, 1962-68. The first season was filmed in black and white. What was interesting was that seasons two and three were filmed in color, but broadcast in black and white, because CBS' prime time lineup was still in B&W. But Desilu recognized the future value of having reruns in color. As a result, those who saw the original 1963-65 broadcasts saw them in B&W, even on a color set. Those who later saw the syndicated reruns saw them in color, as they were originally filmed. I believe CBS went all-color in prime time in 1965, with ABC following a year later.

Because shows flipped from B&W to color and then back, most of the networks had some sort of identifier (e.g. NBC peacock) to alert viewers if the following program was in color---if not, people didn't call into their local stations to ask what was wrong.

NBC:

 

CBS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq0mUCFlizg

 

ABC:
 
scarier peacock

This is the original 1957 peacock. NBC was first with color (not counting CBS valiant but ill-fated attempt earlier in the decade) and needed a color identifier first. I don't remember this version (not quite old enough to watch prime time before 1962) but it sounds terrifying. I'm glad they switched to the gentler/kinder peacock by the time I was old enough to stay up for prime time.
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrHWmUpZFyI&feature=related
 
We had an RCA new vista first, then ughh a Truetone from western auto, worst ever, the truetone was one of the "instant" on sets that had tubes glowing even when off, visilibe from the back panel it think these were the ones that started several fires.  That was the folks last bargain buy tv,  We stayed with RCA after that.   By the late 60's early 70's there was a great bally hoo about a percent of solid state like 60 %  SS.  40 %tube.  In reality it was cheaper to replace a tube than to tackle solid state problems the  techs especially rural areas did not like to fool with the solid state situation. I think electronics of this era led to our disposable attitude for electronics,  It  most often  was cheaper to get new that have a "tube guy" fool with the set and then need him back.  cannot remember that last time I had a console tv worked on at home.long before the consoles fell into obsolesence.

 

 
 
I believe CBS went all-color in prime time in 1965

They must have gone fully color later on. PERRY MASON ran until Spring, 1966, and it was entirely black and white except for one episode. My understanding is that one color episode was a test to see what the show would look in color had it survived into the "all color" era.
 
Interesting Thread

My OM's excuse was "it's not perfected yet!". I won a 16" Zenith portable in a Church raffle in 1970. What a PITA to tune, every time you changed a channel you had to re-adjust the color and tint. We put it inside my parents' 1948 RCA cabinet as the set had gone kaput by that time but the cabinet was still beautiful. The OM was right, I guess, the set went on the blink ONE WEEK after the warranty expired. I vowed I'd never buy another Zenith product again. It was back to B&W for awhile. They had a fairly new B&W Magnavox Home Entertainment Center in the living room (TV, AM/FM, Stereo). When I got married in 1971 we saved-up for awhile and bought a Magnavox color table model, again manual adjustment but the color held from one channel to another. My parents' 25th anniversary was in 1972, so I bought them a 19" Sylvania table model. Automatic tuning! It was great! Back into the '48 cabinet it went for a good 15 years or so. My Magnavox lasted well into the 1980s and I replaced it with another. My aunt had the Motorola Quasar with the "instant on". My sister was dating a TV repairman, he disconnected the feature - said it was too dangerous; besides pulling current all the time was a waste.

Living in the NY/NJ Metro area we had color early. One of the neighbors when we lived in the 'hood worked at the RCA plant in Harrison, NJ. He built a color set (probably from filched parts) and put it in a packing crate for a cabinet. We kids used to go over to watch cartoons which was pretty much all that was on in color at the time. I do remember that ABC's "The Jetsons" was their first network program in color. Crazy what you recall. We kids were watching comedian George Gobel's show when it went to color. He said, "This is for the people with B&W" and pulled up his pant legs. His garters for his socks had the straps labeled "red" "blue" "green" "orange". Pretty funny.
 
Although we didn't get our first color TV until 1972 when we moved into our new house (RCA XL 100...biggest piece of crap), our neighbors across the street had a set from White's Auto and Home store (competitor to Western Auto). The man of the house was an assistant manager. I believe it was in 1966 when he first brought it home. And, to make everyone on the block extremely "jealous", it also had..REMOTE CONTROL! The first show I saw on that set was "Lost In Space".

And, speaking of promos, since Liz didn't want anyone to forget...:) (I like the way she says "color")

 
The Last NBC Peacock Holdout

I believe it was the "Tonight" show with Johnny Carson.  They continued to open the broadcast with the peacock sequence many years after NBC and the other two networks were filming/taping everything in color and had long since dropped their color presentation announcements.  I stopped watching Carson on a regular basis well before he retired, but his production company may have required inclusion of the peacock up until his last show.

 

 
 
Thanks for that tidbit about the Motorola square CRT's, I never knew that! Learn something new all the time. Come to think of it, I have never seen a Motorola "fish bowl" television before.

Our first set was in late 1964. It was one of the first Zenith rectangular screens on the market. It was a wider set with speakers on both sides of the screen and tone controls on the lower right hand side of the set below the main controls.

One thing I did notice about broadcast color television. Some shows had better colors than others. Later I looked at the credits of the show to see who did the color processing. It seemed that Technicolor was the best, followed by Pathe, then Metrocolor, and finally DeLuxe. It seemed that DeLuxe was the worst. Many of the colors were overexposed, most of time the blacks were crushed. Shadowing on faces was terrible. No matter how you adjusted your set, shows by DeLuxe had terrible color most of the time.

So when you switched channels you often had to readjust the colors on the set. Most everyone I knew adjusted the color by how the clothing and backround looked on the sets. What I would do was kill the color completely, then adjust brightness and contrast for a good B&W picture, then add color and when I was satisfied with that I went to the tint control for a nice flesh tone. Little did I know, but that is how most television studios adjusted their color cameras before being used for a broadcast!

I think Magnavox would have had higher sales in our area if they made the sets available through major retailers. But most of the time Magnavox was sold through small to medium size dealer/repair shops. We bought our first Zenith from the shop a few blocks away. It cost $600.00, with $50 for delivery and set up.

My first color set was a early 70's Motorola 21 inch table model that was given to me by one of my aunts in 1975. Before that I had a Zenith 12" B&W portable that I was given as a gift in 1969. I still have that set today and it still works! But the CRT is getting weak, and I think it needs a tube brightener on it. My first purchased color set was a 1982 Zenith 21 inch System 3 table model with a wood cabinet and that phone option built in. It even had a remote control! It was not the most reliable set either. It lasted until 1988 or so when I got tired of having it repaired (it couldn't keep power supplies in it) and we bought a JVC 25 inche unit. Then we moved that into the bedroom and bought one of the early Samsung built Zenith sets. It was problematic and eventually caught fire one night while we were sleeping. Fortunately one of our dogs woke us up to warn us. I just unplugged it and the fire went out. We called the fire dept, and they put the set out in the back yard for us. In 2004 then bought a 36 inch Sony Wega set that we have to this day. It has been rock solid since.
 
we had an Olympic 25" inch color TV/Stereo combination console, seemed like for years, but the TV only lasted from 1965 to 1975, I mis units like this, plenty of big speakers for the TV and Stereo.......we would play records for hours.....

by the time the tubes began to fail, they weren't readily available for service, we had a few 19 inch color sets for a while.......the next color console TV we got by Magnavox, had the instant on, and the magic EYE to adjust color and contrast to the rooms light, which was a joke, it never worked right.......

1988 we went to Sears and got an RCA 26 console with remote, got about 15 years out of that before it went belly up.....then in keeping with RCA's, went to the 32 inch on a cabinet to house the Cable box, vcr, and component stereo system......

Irenes storm this past summer jolted that one......replaced by another RCA....this time 36 inch, with built in cabinet.......same remote as not to confuse Mother....

but true about buying anything that is the first model out there......it is the demo, with all the issues and problems.....give them a few years to perfect anything that is made....never buy the prototype!
 
We didn't get a color set untill 1972, it was a GE 19" portable.  Portable, well, it had a handle, but it was very heavy to move.  That set worked flawlessly untill about 1988, not bad considering it often ran all night while someone fell asleep on the sofa.

 

Ken D.
 
Color TV Programming

CBS held out on color in part because of its running feud with RCA (NBC's parent at the time). I wrote this article in 2004 for Teletronic, a sister site to the UK-based Television Heaven. It's a condensed history of color television in America.

 

Latest posts

Back
Top