This Week's TV Game Show Almanac

[Winkfan]

In fact, when "Price is Right" moved from NBC to ABC in the mid-60s, it actually had to revert to black and white because ABC wasn't broadcasting that many shows in color - it was too expensive for them to do so.

But the 'Alphabet Network' would go back on their word regarding color TV soon enough.

There is another game show milestone this week: The Who, What or Where Game was unveiled by NBC 35 years ago yesterday (December 29, 1969).

Cordially,
Tammy Warner--the 'Joan Rivers of the Big Board!'

[chris319]

NBC was the first network to really push for color.

NBC was owned by RCA, which invented the color TV system in use today. RCA had a triple interest in color TV: 1) sales of color TV sets, 2) sales of color broadcast equipment, and 3) color programming for NBC.

[chris319]

"Concentration" was the straggler before 1966 because Norm Blumenthal had a strange aversion to not spending his bosses' money to convert the show to color.

I suspect the call was out of Blumenthal's hands and was instead made at the corporate level. Which non-film shows were converted to color was determined by which studios were converted to color. Converting to color involved a major capital expenditure and not all facilities in New York were converted. IIRC the color season of WML? was done at the Sullivan theater, which had been converted to color, whereas studio 52 had not.