Early TV: "The Story of Television" 1956 RCA David Sarnoff Vladimir Zwyorkin

[Jantv81]

Who said there weren't any good Russians? Take Sarnoff, please!

[fromthesidelines]

...and the cost of RCA Victor color sets was such in the mid-'50s {$1,000-3,000, depending on the model} that few people actually had access to color programming.

[fromthesidelines]

NBC, RCA's subsidiary, was the ONLY network actively scheduling color programs on their network at the time this was released; to a lesser extent, CBS, NBC's chief rival, also programmed a few weekly series and specials in color from 1954 through '59, then abandoned color programming until the fall of 1965 because of their rivalry with RCA [they didn't want RCA to sell more TV sets if they provided color shows to view them on]. However, NBC had only a handful of color shows on their schedule...

[Jantv81]

@fromthesidelines One thing to add was the constant innovation of the network, as the means of color processing techniques was always improving- thus while in competition with CBS and their waves into color- which of course was seen on and off throughout the fifties. An old 1952 color episode of Burns and Allen makes my point.