GoKawiilThe first all-color prime-time TV season in America debuted in 1966. But in England, color programming (or should I say colour programming) wouldn’t take off for the next few years.
In America, the TV cameras for color television had three camera tubes, one for each color of light: red, green, and blue. In England, a different camera system was widely used that added a fourth camera tube. That fourth tube captured a black-and-white image that was merged with the color information.
When the British channel ITV made their switch to color at the end of 1969, the camera operators union felt that the additional technical knowledge and skills required for a color camera deserved a pay increase for the operators. ITV disagreed. So the operators came up with a clever way to strike.
They simply shut off the red, green, and blue tubes in the cameras, leaving the fourth black-and-white tube on, essentially turning those fancy cameras back into black-and-white cameras.
It caused all sorts of havoc for shows that were promoted as being in color, and ad revenue was lower than expected now that programming wasn’t in color after all. Without a full work stoppage, the camera operators union still managed to hurt ITV.
The strike lasted about three months before an agreement was reached, and then color programming resumed.
Corporate would like you to watch this two-part training video on the EMI 2001 camera like the ones that ITV used. Thank you for your compliance. “They're four-tube cameras, one for each primary and one for luminance. The tendency these days is to go over to three tube cameras, but we'll we'll speak about that at a later date.”
The Upstairs/Downstairs Side Effect
Despite the strike, ITV still had to begin filming the first season of their new show Upstairs/Downstairs, a drama that was sort of like Downton Abbey before Downton Abbey, about the family upstairs and the staff downstairs in a large townhouse.
The plan was to eventually sell the show to American television, but the strike created a problem. The first six episodes of the show were filmed during the strike and were black-and-white, and the rest of the episodes filmed after the strike were in color. What American network would want a show that has some episodes in black-and-white and some in color in a single season?
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