From black and white to a rainbow schedule
In 1967 most American television sets still showed only black and white. Yet the broadcasting industry was already behaving as if color were the future, and by the end of the year it largely was, at least on the screen. The change happened first in what networks put on the air and only later in what families owned.
Color broadcasting in the United States had been technically possible since the early 1950s, when a standard compatible with black-and-white sets was approved. Sales were weak for years, because sets were expensive and few programmes were transmitted in color. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem: viewers saw little reason to buy sets without programmes, and networks saw little reason to pay for color production without an audience.
The networks make the push
RCA, which owned NBC as well as manufacturing sets, had the strongest interest in breaking the deadlock. NBC had been promoting color for years, and Walt Disney’s anthology series on the network was marketed as a “wonderful world of color” from the early 1960s. In the autumn of 1965 NBC announced that nearly all its evening programming would be in color, and CBS and ABC followed with more of their schedules in the next two seasons. By the 1966-67 season, color was becoming standard in prime time, and by the 1967-68 season essentially all of the three networks’ evening entertainment shows were filmed or taped in color.
This had practical effects on production. Studios needed more light, sets and costumes were designed with color in mind, and film stock had to be chosen with care. Westerns, variety shows and science fiction series, including the original Star Trek on NBC, were good candidates for color because they had bright costumes, landscapes and effects. News broadcasts and some daytime programmes lagged behind, and many local stations needed new equipment before they could produce their own programmes in color.
Sets in homes
Even with the programmes on the air, color sets were still a minority purchase in 1967. A set cost several hundred dollars, a considerable sum when median family income was a little under $8,000 a year, and a console model with a large cabinet cost more. Sets were also more complicated. Viewers had to adjust knobs for tint and color, and a set that was tuned badly could turn faces green or purple. Repairs were more frequent and more costly than for black-and-white sets.
Even so, sales rose quickly through the decade. Households with color sets were a small share of the total in the mid-1960s and grew year after year, though precise figures from this period vary by source. Color sets did not reach a majority of American homes until the early 1970s. A family that did have one often placed it in the living room and kept an older black-and-white set elsewhere in the house, and neighbours might gather to watch a favourite programme or a sporting event.
Advertisers noticed. A colourful commercial could sell cars, soft drinks and packaged food more effectively than a grey one, and sponsors paid more attention to the look of their advertisements. Colour also helped retailers and manufacturers of other consumer goods, because a showroom full of colour sets was itself a draw. The spread of colour fitted a wider pattern in which the American home was filling up with new appliances and electronics.
The audience gap
Because black-and-white sets still dominated, networks could not assume that viewers saw what the producers intended. Programmes were made to look acceptable in both formats. Some shows that now seem inseparable from colour, such as variety hours and comedies like those of the Smothers Brothers, reached most viewers in grey in 1967. The same was true of the made-for-television pop group the Monkees television band, whose bright clothes and sets were designed for colour but often appeared in monochrome.
Britain joins in
Colour television also arrived in Britain in 1967. The BBC began a colour service on its second channel, BBC2, in July of that year, with coverage of the Wimbledon tennis championships among the first programmes. The service was limited at first, and the 625-line colour system needed new sets that were expensive. Regular colour broadcasting on the BBC’s main channel and on ITV did not begin until November 1969, and colour sets did not become common in British homes until the 1970s.
Why it mattered
Colour television is a good example of a technology that changed over several years rather than overnight. In 1967 the visible change was on the networks’ schedules, and the household change was just getting under way. The year also showed how closely the industry’s economics were tied together: a manufacturer owning a network could use programming to sell hardware, and advertisers could use hardware sales to justify higher rates. Within a few years, black-and-white sets became the exception, and the “living room” came to mean a room arranged around a colour screen.
The figures on set ownership in this period are approximate and should be read as an outline of the trend rather than an exact count.