OPPapers.com

The History Of Nbc

The History of NBC

News Channel 4 signed on the air as WNBT on July 1,1941, at 1:29 p.m. This historic event was the beginning of commercial television in the United States. At 2:30 p.m. the same day, WNBT again made history when 4,000 television sets were tuned to the station's first telecast, a game at Ebbets Field between Brooklyn and Philadelphia, followed by the P&G sponsored "Truth or Consequences" and "Uncle Jim's Questions Bee."
The telecast also brought the first sponsor to the air. The Bulova clock filled the lower right hand quadrant of the test pattern and an announcer read the time. Bulova paid $4 for the first commercial and $5 for the use of facilities. And, America saw its first pair of televised dishpan hands—those of Irene Hubbard, the original star of the Ivory soap commercials. Operating out of Studio 3H, the first simulcast of a news program featured Lowell Thomas, in a Sunoco sponsored 15-minute report at 6:45 p.m.WNBT actually evolved from W2XBS, a pioneer RCA television lab and experimental station. W2XBS began in 1928, when RCA started operating from a transmitter in Van Cortlandt Park. On January 16,1930, a television program originating from NBC's Fifth Avenue studios was transmitted onto a six-foot screen for an audience at the Proctor Theater on Third Avenue and 58th Streets. NBC assumed control of the operation of W2XBS from RCA on July 30,1930.
A year later, NBC began experimental telecasts from a transmitter located on the Empire State Building. W2XBS began the industry's first regular schedule of television service on April 30,1939, when President Roosevelt opened the 1939 New York World's Fair. In 1940, about one year prior to WNBT signing on the air, W2XBS offered television's first coverage of a political convention—the Republic Convention, which was transmitted via coaxial cable to New York from Philadelphia. When the Democrats convened in Chicago, their meetings were filmed and shown on WNBT. In its infancy,...