Color television
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Adoption
See also: Timeline of the introduction of color television in countries
North America
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United States
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NBC's pioneering coast-to-coast color broadcast of the 1954
Tournament of Roses Parade was accompanied by public demonstrations given across the United States on prototype color receivers by manufacturers RCA, General Electric, Philco, Raytheon, Hallicrafters, Hoffman, Pacific Mercury, and others. Two days earlier, Admiral had demonstrated to its distributors the prototype of Admiral's first color television set planned for consumer sale using the NTSC standards, priced at $1,175 (equivalent to $12,804 in 2022). It is not known when actual commercial sales of this receiver began. Production was extremely limited, and no advertisements for it were published in New York newspapers, nor those in Washington, DC.
A color model from Admiral C1617A became available in the Chicago area on 4 January 1954 and appeared in various stores throughout the country, including those in Maryland on 6 January 1954, San Francisco, 14 January 1954, Indianapolis on 17 January 1954, Pittsburgh on 25 January 1954, and Oakland on 26 January 1954, among other cities thereafter. A color model from Westinghouse H840CK15 ($1,295, or equivalent to $14,112 in 2022) became available in the New York area on 28 February 1954; Only 30 sets were sold in its first month. A less expensive color model from RCA (CT-100) reached dealers in April 1954. Television's first prime time network color series was
The Marriage, a situation comedy broadcast live by NBC in the summer of 1954. NBC's anthology series
Ford Theatre became the first network color-filmed series that October; however, due to the high cost of the first fifteen color episodes, Ford ordered that two black-and-white episodes be filmed for every color episode. The first series to be filmed entirely in color was NBC's
Norby[/i1] a sitcom that lasted 13 weeks, from January to April 1955, and was replaced by repeats of Ford Theatre's color episodes.
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