Color Television Introduced in US

Setting the scene

Color television was introduced in the United States on June 25, 1951, when CBS broadcast the first commercial color TV program, a variety show featuring Arthur Godfrey, Ed Sullivan, and others, to a limited audience in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The broadcast used CBS's field-sequential color system, developed by Peter Goldmark, which was incompatible with existing black-and-white sets. Only a few dozen prototype color receivers existed, mostly in CBS laboratories and at the homes of executives.

What happened

The CBS system was approved by the FCC in October 1950 over RCA's competing dot-sequential system, but it had major drawbacks—it required a mechanical spinning color wheel, produced a smaller picture, and could not be received on the 12 million black-and-white sets already in American homes. The Korean War then intervened— the U.S. government banned color TV manufacturing in November 1951 to conserve materials for defense production. CBS broadcast color only sporadically until 1953.

Why it still matters

In December 1953, the FCC reversed its decision and approved RCA's compatible color system, which became the NTSC standard still used today. NBC, owned by RCA, began regular color broadcasting in 1954. Color TV adoption was slow—sets cost $1,000 ($11,000 today) in 1954, and few programs were in color until the mid-1960s. The 1951 CBS launch, though technically a failure, marked the beginning of the color television era that would transform entertainment, advertising, and culture, making television the dominant medium of the second half of the 20th century.

Background

Color TV became standard by the 1960s.