February 17 - The Midlands becomes the first part of the UK outside London to receive ITV, when ATV Midlands begins broadcasting their weekday franchise. The weekend franchise, ABC, appears a day later.
April - WNBQ (now WMAQ-TV) in Chicago becomes the first TV station to broadcast all its local programming in color.
April 14- Ampex demonstrates a videotape recorder at the 1956 NARTB (now NAB) convention in Chicago, Illinois. It was the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful videotape format known as 2" Quadruplex. The three networks place orders for the recorders.
October 29 - First use of videotape in network television programming; CBS uses its Ampex VTR to record the evening news, anchored by Douglas Edwards. The tape is then fed to West Coast stations three hours later.
November 3 - The 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz is shown on television for the first time in the US, on CBS (the viewing audience was estimated at 45 million people).
November - The first use of videotape on a network television entertainment program. Jonathan Winters uses videotape and superimposing techniques to be able to play two characters in the same skit for his NBC television show.
Television broadcasting begins in Spain and Uruguay.
September 15 - The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (UK) debuts on ITV. After being sold to the NBC network in the United States, it later becomes the first British television series ever to be made in colour. (1956?1957).
Encyclopedia
top
