| 1963 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
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| January 12 |
BBC television production of The Madhouse on Castle Street includes the little-known
Bob Dylan, whose Blowing in the Wind becomes a minor hit later in the year for folk trio Peter,
Paul and Mary. |
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| January 18 |
Polaroid Corporation announces that the Polacolor instant
colour print cameras and film will be launched later in the month in US. |
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| January 20 |
Broadcasting hours of UK’s ITV television network
are extended and the first regular adult education programmes begin at 10:00-11:00 on Sunday mornings. |
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| March |
ITV television network in UK broadcasts a 15-minute commercial
for National Benzole petrol. |
|
| March |
Sony introduces the world’s first fully
transistorised portable videotape recorder, PV-100, for industrial use. |
|
| March |
Television service starts in Gabon. |
Television service starts |
| April |
Precision Instrument of California introduces a portable two-head
helical scan videotape recorder, model PI-3V, weighing 68 lb and using one-inch tape. |
|
| April |
Television Wales and the West (TWW) wins the
first Academy Award (Oscar) for a UK television programme. |
|
| April |
Television service starts in Sierra Leone. |
Television service starts |
| April |
BBC changes its
colour television test transmissions to the French SECAM
system but also acknowledges an interest in the PAL system developed in Germany by
Telefunken. However, planning for a change to colour broadcasting must take second place
to preparations for the new BBC2 channel. |
â July 8 |
| May 4 |
The
Beatles’ record From Me to You reaches number one in the UK record charts,
the first of 15 weeks they will hold this position before the end of the year. |
â November 10 |
| May 7 |
Telstar II satellite is launched. |
|
| May |
Radiodiffusion-Télévision Gabonaise (RTG) launches the first television channel in Gabon. |
Television service starts |
| June 24 |
Telcan fixed-head
longitudinal videotape recorder intended for home-taping of television programmes is
demonstrated on BBC television news. Developed by Norman Rutherford and Michael Turner of
Nottingham Electronic Valve Company (NEVC), the machine uses quarter-inch tape running at
120 ips past fixed heads, carrying two 15-minute tracks. The intended price is £61 19s
(£61.90). Both Telcan and NEVC collapsed. |
The quest for home video: Telcan |
| July 1 |
Lord (Charles) Hill succeeds Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick as ITA chairman. |
|
| July 8 |
Series of demonstrations of
three colour television systems—NTSC, PAL and SECAM—are staged in London for
members of the European Broadcasting Union and the Organisation Internationale de
Radiodiffusion et Télévision (OIRT). The BBC predicts that it will be the first European
country to start regular colour television transmissions. |
|
| July |
Syncom II communications satellite launched. |
|
| July 31 |
Enactment in UK of Television Act 1963 extends
the life of the Independent Television Authority (ITA) for another 12 years to 1976. |
|
| August 22 |
Meeting of the British Radio Equipment Manufacturers'
Association is told that around 80 per cent of television sets in the London area will be
unable to receive the new BBC2 service due to start in eight months' time. All receivers
currently being manufactured are dual standard for both 405-line and 625-line reception. |
|
| August |
Television services start in Congo, Ivory Coast and Jamaica. |
Television service starts |
| September 2 |
CBS Evening News is extended from 15 to 30 minutes. |
|
| September 15 |
Independent Television Authority (ITA)
invites applications by November 18 for commercial television licences that will run from
30 July 1964. Contractors' rentals are to include an additional payment related to the
value of the public concession of a commercial broadcasting franchise. Instead of £5.5m
raised hitherto, the new contracts are expected to yield £23m, including £15m linked to
advertising revenue. Above an exempted £1.5m, the advertising levy of 25 per cent will
apply to the next £6m and 45 per cent above that. |
|
| September 16 |
The BBC announces that in a fortnight's
time it will launch its promotional campaign to raise public awareness of the new channel,
BBC2 (for which a launch date of 20 April 1964 is later set). A kangaroo is chosen as the
promotional symbol. |
|
| autumn |
Clean Up TV Campaign is launched in the UK by former teacher
Mrs Mary Whitehouse, who forms the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (NVALA). |
 Mary
Whitehouse quotation
 British censorship |
| October 1 |
Excise duty of £1 on the UK television licence fee is
abolished and the fee itself is increased by £1 to £4. |
TV licence fee
à 1965 |
| October |
Television services start in Malaysia and Uganda. |
Television service starts |
| November 10 |
ITV network transmission of the recording of Royal Variety Performance, held on November
4 at the London Palladium, achieves the highest ever UK television audience to date (21.1m). Compere
Bruce Forsyth introduces stars including Shirley MacLaine and Max Bygraves but the real stars are
The Beatles. ‘For the last number,’ says John Lennon, introducing
Twist and Shout, ‘I’d like to ask your help. Would the people in the cheaper seats
clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery.’ |
â November |
| November 22 |
Assassination of US president John F Kennedy in Dallas,
Texas is recorded by an amateur cameraman, Jacob Zapruder, on 8mm colour film. |
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| November 24 |
Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald,
suspected of killing President Kennedy, in live television coverage from Dallas, Texas. |
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| November 26 |
Festival of World Television, organised by British Film Institute, opens in London. |
|
| November |
Film soundtrack recording of South Pacific,
released in 1958, becomes the first LP to sell a million copies in the UK alone. |
|
| November |
The Beatles achieve British record advance
orders of 950,000 copies of I Want to Hold Your Hand. |
â December 14 and 21 |
| November |
Television service starts in Sudan. |
Television service starts |
| November |
In a Roper poll, 36 per cent of Americans say television is the most reliable
source of news, compared with 24 per cent nominating print media. |
|
| December 7 |
An audio album, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy—A memorial album, based on a broadcast by radio station WMCA New York on
the day of the assassination, sells 4m copies in the next six days to become the fastest
selling record of all time. All proceeds from the 99 cents LP go to the Joseph Kennedy Jr
Foundation for Mental Retardation. Another label’s release, The Presidential Years
sells a million copies in six days at the same price. |
|
| December |
Transmitter mast for KTHI-TV, Fargo, North Dakota, US
opens—at the time the world’s tallest structure at 628m. |
ß 1962 |
| December 14 and 21 |
The
Beatles occupy the top two positions in the UK record charts with I Want to Hold Your
Hand and She Loves You, the latter having already been number one for six weeks
and in the top three for 14 weeks. The Beatles simultaneously hold the top three places in
the EP chart and top two places in the album chart. |
à 1964 |
| December 28 |
Last edition of the satirical programme That Was the Week That Was on BBC Television. |
Quotation from BBC Director General Hugh Greene |
| l |
BBC introduces an electronic line-store standards converter. |
|
| l |
English by Television teaching programmes introduced by BBC. |
|
| l |
Post Office Tower (later renamed Telecom Tower) opens in Cleveland Mews, London, with
an array of telecom receivers and transmitters and a revolving restaurant at the top. |
|
| l |
Independent Television Authority bans advertising magazine programmes (admags). |
|
| l |
US Federal Communications Commission offers matching
funding for new educational television stations. |
|
| l |
FCC requires cable operators to block relays of distant signals of programmes that
duplicate those of local stations if asked to do so by the local broadcaster. |
|
| l |
FCC requires all television sets sold in the US after
1964 to be capable of receiving UHF transmissions. |
|
| l |
Among US television networks, CBS charges $50,000 a minute for
prime-time advertising; ABC averages $45,000 and NBC $41,000. |
|
| l |
Publications & Entertainments Act is
passed in South Africa, creating the Publications Control Board to monitor
films, public entertainments and all publications except newspapers for
their standards of indecency or obscenity. Appeals against adjudications
can be made to the Supreme Court, except for films, when the supreme arbiter in
the Minister of the Interior. |
à 1974 |
| l |
Television services start in Singapore and Upper Volta (=Burkina Faso). |
Television service starts |
| l |
3M introduces new improved videotape Scotch Brand 379. |
|
| l |
US firm Machtronics introduces helical scan videotape recorder. |
|
| l |
Video artist Nam June Paik has 13-monitor installation
piece with distorted broadcast images on show in German art gallery. |
|
| l |
British National Film Catalogue founded. |
|
| l |
First Algerian feature film released, Peuple en
marche, directed by Ahmed Rachedi and René Vautier. |
|
| l |
Cinema-in-the-round shown at Piccadilly Circus, London under the name Russian Roundabout. |
|
| l |
Durwood Theatres, a regional operator with 13 screens and 10,000 seats, opens the
first mall 'multiplex' (two screens) cinema at the Ward Parkway Center in Kansas City. |
à 1966 |
| l |
French manufacturer Angénieux introduces a 12mm-120mm
(10:1) zoom lens that quickly becomes and industry standard for 16mm film production. |
|
| l |
Editec electronic video editing is introduced by Ampex. It allows
frame-by-frame recording control and tape editing and makes simple animation effects possible. |
|
| l |
Direct broadcasting by satellite (DBS) first mooted at
Extraordinary Administrative Radio Conference (EARC), Geneva, organised by ITU. |
|
| l |
Colour images of the inside of the living human brain
are recorded at the Hôpital Foch at Suresne near Paris, using a ventriculoscope. |
|
| l |
Design consultant Colin Mason of
Wolverhampton, England announces that he has developed a video record player after seven
years' research supported by a Wolverhampton company. The video player is similar in size
to a conventional audio disc player, plugs into a conventional television set and will cost
about £35. The records will be called 'videograms'. |
|
| l |
First Japanese modular stereo hi-fi equipment manufactured by Pioneer. |
|
| l |
UK Department of Scientific and Industrial Research's
Road Research Laboratory at Crowthorne, Berkshire demonstrates a system for transmitting
recorded messages to special £10 receivers fitted in cars or direct to car radios.
Pre-recorded messages are triggered by buried cables in the road. |
|
| l |
Microscope with a television tube pick-up is devised at Llanfrechfa Grange
Hospital, Cwmbran, Wales to show chromosome count on a television screen. |
|
| l |
Richard F Rutz of IBM in New York develops an 'optical
transistor' of gallium arsenide in which some of the input electrical energy is converted
to light that passes through the device much faster than normal electrical current and
thus obviates the need to make the transistor's base as this as possible to reduce
transmission time. |
|
| l |
Frank Sinatra sells his Reprise record label to Warner
Bros and becomes vice president of Warner Bros Picture Corporation. |
|
| l |
Oklahoma City Times produces a regular edition
using computer typesetting—at least the teletype tape carrying journalists' copy is
generated from a 1620 computer that can produce 85 column-inches a minute, 11 picas wide
in 9pt type. This continuously feeds eight Linotype machines that produce the hot metal 'slugs'. |
|
| l |
Daily Mirror becomes the first UK newspaper to sell over 5m copies a
day (5.018m), while second-place Daily Express reaches an all-time peak of 4.344m. The
Sunday Pictorial changes its name to the Sunday Mirror. |
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