[Tig] More memories please

[Kassner, Neal]

rob wrote:

>incidentally, CBS tended to use PC-70s and other Norelco cameras, one
>reason being they were made by a company other than RCA (which owned 
>NBC).  
 
When I got to CBS in 1981, all the in-house studios were equipped with Norelco PC-70s, but the off-site studios and remote trucks had Thompson CSF TTV1515s. Shortly thereafter we transitioned to Hitachi SK-110 studio cameras. Other Hitachi customers got the full-featured SK-100s, but ours were modded by the manufacturer to eliminate many of the features on the operating panel other than iris, ped, and paint controls. We didn't even have gamma control available to us in the control rooms - it was considered a setup adjustment and was taken care of during the initial registration and color balance routine done by others elsewhere in the plant.
 
Back then a delivery requirement for all technical equipment used at CBS in New York was that it be painted a specific shade of gray, called LGBK. Everything from blank rack panels to Tektronix scopes to Conrac monitors to Ampex quad tape machines had to adhere to this color scheme. In fact, I was told the following by someone who witnessed the incident first-hand: back in the 1960's when the Ed Sullivan show converted to color, the production was sent to Miami for a few weeks so Studio 50 (current home of "Late Show with David Letterman") could be upgraded. During the conversion, someone at the vice-presidential level in the Engineering Department stopped by to see how things were going.  They had just taken delivery of the new color cameras (my source didn't remember who the manufacturer was) which had been painted by a brand-new textured-surface epoxy painting process of some sort. The VP called the engineer in charge of the project over to complain that the cameras were not painted CBS-spec gray. "Repaint them" was the directive. The manufacturer's painting process prevented them from just being sanded and repainted, so all the electronics had to be stripped out of the camera heads which were then sent out to be sandblasted, repainted in LGBK, and reassembled before they could be used. These days though, we use the same stuff in the same colors as everybody else in the industry, although there are still many remnants of LGBK throughout the building.
 
 
Neal Kassner
Colorist
CBS News/NY