The slow revolution: Color TV no overnight sensation

It’s hard to imagine a world where our images on our various screens aren’t brought to us in color.

Sixty years ago, it was the norm. All televisions were in black and white, well shades of gray actually, as were all the television broadcasts.

But, something happened on June 7, 1953: Color TVs hit store shelves.

Six months later, the Tournament of Roses Parade would be the first national color broadcast. It was telecast by 21 stations in the NBC network.

That wasn’t enough to get the ball rolling though. In 1954, Westinghouse began selling color TVs. The cost was $1,295, which is the equivalent of $11,878.03 here in 2018. Back then, you could buy a car for the same amount.

So, yeah, when it came to priorities, color seemed to be near the bottom.

Slow growth

The color TV wouldn’t take off until the 1960s. Though, even in 1964 only 3.1 percent of television households in the U.S. had a color set. The big networks still had black and white shows produced, intermingling with those in color. It was during 1964–1965 that the color dam began bursting and the number of households with color TV grew not by thousands, as had been normal in the prior decade, but by millions. By 1966, all three of the major networks were airing their prime-time shows in color.

Plus, we got those color bars that filled the screen for minutes up to several hours a day, usually from the time the stations would shut down for the night and start up in the morning. Sometimes, you’d get snow along with white noise between the color bars on the screen.

By the 1970s, only some high-numbered UHF stations would still be broadcasting in black and white, by 1980, they changed too.

Bye, bye black and white

As color TVs took over the living rooms of America in the 1960s, the black and white TV would find itself relegated to kitchens, bathrooms and dens if they weren’t just collecting dust in the store. By the 1980s, the only black and white TVs one would find would be the portable ones, with small screens and a handle of sorts. But, even by the end of that decade, those portables would be in color too.