Color Coding

I knew vaguely that NBC had at one time had two parallel networks, the Red Network and the Blue, and that one of them had been sold off and become a separate network. I'd always had a vague intention to look up which network was which -- was the modern NBC the Blue Network? Was CBS the Red?

I had the feeling that ABC was the original competitor to NBC -- the American network versus the National, like with baseball leagues, right? -- and with those names taken, the spinoff network had to settle for the lesser alternative of "Columbia", right? But somehow I never thought to look them up when I was on the Internet, or at the library.

Today I finally did think of looking it up, and found that I was, as is so often the case, about half right:

NBC was the first commercial broadcast network. Almost from the first, they had separate Red and Blue feeds (also regional networks called White, Orange and Gold). Also almost from the first, their upstart rival CBS (founded by the Columbia record label) complained that the color-coded networks were the beginnings of a broadcast monopoly. In 1937, the Blue Network was sold off, briefly known simply as "the Blue Network" and eventually renamed ABC, while NBC retained the Red Network.

Some people at NBC remembered over the years: when they adopted their "Big N" logo in 1976, it was made up of two identical shapes, one red and one blue. In 1992, the network ran three separate feeds of Olympic coverage: Red, White and Blue.

Well, I suppose very few people under seventy know or care about all this, but I'm pleased to finally know the whole story. I still harbor a fond hope that one day NBC will offer Red andBlue" cable feeds, even though these days people would doubtless be expecting some "Red and Blue political agenda.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Knowing where you come from helps you to know where you're going."\\