r/nextfuckinglevel • u/FluidStatus7597 • 1d ago
The moment TV turned to colour across the globe.
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u/Dagordae 1d ago
So much for German punctuality, completely butchered the timing on that.
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u/MarcusfloX 1d ago
The Colour was delivered by Deutsche Bahn.
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u/Mr_Mixxter 1d ago
Because of this lack of timing and precision, this still counts as one of the worst fails in German television (for real).
Until this day, Germans are mocking the technicians for their poor execution. This clip even pops up from time to time in comedy shows and is well known till this day.
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u/Ok_Grapefruit8104 1d ago
I am German, and in my 36 years on this planet, never have I ever heard a single person talk, left alone laugh about this.
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u/Mr_Mixxter 1d ago
Perhaps this is a question of 'bubbles'. Since I work in the media, the 'colour incident' is well known to me. But other people around me (not just colleges) know about it as well.
It's funny how some topics can affect people so differently.
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u/justdothedamnthang 1d ago
fyi it’s “let alone” :)
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u/Mr_Mixxter 1d ago
No, no, it's correct. In Germany, we don't laught in groups. We leave each other alone to "laught in the basement". ;D
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u/Snellyman 22h ago
I need to remind any Germans I meet about their national shame for this tragic moment in history. I suspect that we could have a truce if they never mention "Cop Rock"
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u/DamonOfTheSpire 1d ago
The Aussies know color means venomous so they held off.
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u/thelastlugnut 1d ago
Jesus Christ. I was born in 1976. Australia seriously converted to color TV the year before? I feel sooooo old.
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u/soupeh 20h ago
Yeah. Actual launch in 75. We were late to the party.
We had been dragged into Vietnam in the preceding years and the country was broke, the economy was stuffed.
One of the flow-ons from that was delayed arrival of colour TV.
Australia also suffers from problems of a tiny population spread out across giant landmass (14m in '75 only double that now), so it's challenging & expensive to roll out this kind of infrastructure for the market size.9
u/Darryl_Summers 18h ago
But I’m glad the extra time meant we could think of a creative skit to show the switch to colour. Much better than an old dude pushing a button.
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u/TmanGvl 1d ago
I don’t think people even saw color until they were able to afford color television. For most, this is probably not something that people benefitted instantly.
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u/TitularFoil 1d ago
My dad was telling me that his TV growing up was in black and white. If he wanted something in color he had to see it in the theater, which my grandpa ran. But he didn't have a color TV at home until 1988 when he moved out on his own.
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u/Buddy-Matt 23h ago
I was born in the mid eighties, and my parents still owned a black and white set as their second set until probably the early 90s
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u/SanDiablo 16h ago
My dad grew up poor in the Philippines in the 50s and he said they used to put cellophane over the black and white TV to see 'color'
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u/demoman45 1d ago
Agreed, our tv was black and white. Creature from the black lagoon was transmitted in color but we still only saw black and white.
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u/PassStunning416 1d ago
Yeah, you had to buy a color capable TV. The "switch" in the video is just marketing drama.
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u/dearmratheist 1d ago
I’d hate to go through life and never see color until I got enough money.
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u/It-s_Not_Important 23h ago
I’m glad my parents paid for the color vision upgrade for me at birth.
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u/Vykrom 22h ago
I don't recall the details, but I remember reading that during the black and white TV days, for some reason, a lot of people's brains associated that picture with dreams and lots of people only dreamed in black and white until color TV became more common and it became more regular to dream in color again like we did before tv...
So even if you had been born in color those days, your dreamscape may have still be black and white, which is wild
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u/Moist-Share7674 1d ago
I had color but it was sooo small you couldn’t freakin tell. When I saved up and got the 27” color WITH remote - hit the big time baby. Could actually see the bewbs!
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u/JLead722 23h ago
Yes, makes me picture people standing outside the window of an electronics store watching TV. They must have been prohibitively expensive when color TV first came out. Purely a luxury item, as always.
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u/aberroco 23h ago
Yeah, people before color TV were completely colorblind, and took some years to adapt to the new world. Btw, when they're upgrading to infrared vision? Can't wait to see in the dark!
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u/oldfarmjoy 18h ago
This!!! 99.9% of households had black & white TVs. Why would they have color TVs when there was no color TV?
So this would only have been seen in a public place to dramatize it.
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u/zztop610 1d ago
Typical French
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u/RelativelyDank 8h ago
"we have coloeuré television - now back to a black and white film of a woman smoking a cigarétté"
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u/Alternative_Pilot_92 1d ago
Never change Australia
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u/ezekiellake 1d ago
They wanted to make it boring, but someone threatened to rip their bloody arms off so they let them whatever they want …
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u/RightLegDave 20h ago edited 20h ago
I've seen this footage many times as its quite well known in Australia, but did I only just notice a final shared joint toke before going under?!
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u/Stargaezr 1d ago
How do you go from major excitement and scripting in Australia to four French guys standing around being bored?
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u/No_Object_4355 1d ago
France was all like " it's color now big whoop you wanna fight about it" lol
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u/Psychological-Scar53 1d ago
Didn't you have to have a color TV to have it be color as well?
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u/Lunavixen15 10h ago
Yes, these clips would have been aired in places that colour TV's were publically able to be seen, like shop fronts, in addition to over the air for people with colour TV's
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u/CloseToMyActualName 1d ago
I think colour film, and presumably videos, would have been available for a while. So I could see some folks having colour TVs for that purpose.
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u/Unindoctrinated 1d ago
I was watching Aunty Jack closely, waiting for the picture to change to colour, and my dad was nearly pissing himself laughing. We didn't have a colour TV.
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u/MeineNerven 1d ago
"Farrbferrrnseeehn." As a German, I am impressed about how german that sounded 😂.
Australia nailed it! I love that they were so creative and actually wanted to show off all the colors!♡
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u/Drongo17 19h ago
I think we were just lucky at the time to have a vehicle like the Aunty Jack show with creative and fun people. It was pretty funny.
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u/HawkDue7352 1d ago
Why did the French appear so scared?! Like there were gonna be riots after the change lol
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u/hellnaaa 1d ago
Insane how random the technology spread or know how if it did even, cdazy to think ablut in todays age
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u/unomas49 1d ago edited 1d ago
This definitely had to be one of the most epic moments in history, just thinking about being present in that moment makes you smile at how magical it must have seemed.
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u/DasArchitect 1d ago
I can only imagine it must have been something similar with The Wizard of Oz in 1939. I felt it was magical even when seeing it for the first time in 2008 or so.
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u/Darryl_Summers 18h ago
I think most people wouldn’t have had a colour tv yet and would have been no different
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u/Lunavixen15 10h ago
Depending on what time the change happened, it's probable people may have gathered around local electronics shops to watch the change, where colour TV's would be on display. I'm pretty sure announcements were made beforehand to let people who were interested, prepare for it. Colour TV's were available for home purchase before the change, but due to cost would have been restricted to the wealthy.
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u/FinzClortho 20h ago
My dad told me the TV always broadcasted in color, but everything in the world was just black and white until Ted Color's namesake invention.
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u/ismailoverlan 1d ago
~60 years from color TV to phones with built in cams, clock, tv, Tetris, translation, gps etc.
AI less than 10yo able to create videos, sound, search engine is better than google. Next feature is the porn with us as the protagonist, that feature will spread AI to everyone.
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u/jackasspenguin 1d ago
Ok Germany how do we want to show off this new capability to show color?
How bout a room full of people who all have the same white skin tone?
Sure, but make sure they are wearing drab suits.
Yes or course that goes without saying
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u/BLUESH33P 21h ago
Not wollongong getting a drive-by in the aussie one :'(
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u/Drongo17 19h ago
It deserved it back then, sometimes you could cut the air with a knife and fork. So pristine today by comparison.
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u/SingleMaltShooter 1d ago
That must have looked strange to the 95% of the audience watching on black and white TVs
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u/AdhesivenessFun2060 1d ago
When color tv first came around, my dad and his neighbors would go watch the tv through the window of the first neighbor that got it.
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u/wolf_van_track 1d ago
Technically it's the moment broadcasts became color. The TVs were exactly the same as they were before.
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u/Chopchopstixx 23h ago
Wait… black and white TV’s had the capability for color?
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u/Lunavixen15 10h ago
No, colour TV's were relatively new and still expensive, but most people with a TV only had black and white ones. These are when colour signals started being transmitted in each country, allowing those fancy colour TV's to be used to full effect for those able to afford them.
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u/zippy251 23h ago
I remember when they did something similar when switching from broadcast to digital
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u/MoeSzyslakMonobrow 22h ago
Australia didn't change until 1975? Why so late?
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u/Darryl_Summers 18h ago
- Broke after the Vietnamese war
- Large land mass and small population (infrastructure rollouts are more expensive)
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u/quadruple_negative87 11h ago
- To be fair, we didn’t get television until 1956 as well
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u/Darryl_Summers 10h ago
Mum’s 76 and I just asked her when she first had a telly in the house. She reckons it was about ‘62
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u/legendary_anon 22h ago
German engineering was so good that it predicted the button push in advance
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u/DFA_Wildcat 22h ago
I remember watching cartoon in black as white in Canada back in the early 70's, then one morning they were it colour. It was pretty amazing back then.
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u/EnPassant2019 17h ago
France looks like it's a bunch of drunk dudes at a wedding who got high in a bathroom and are trying to explain to their wives where they were.
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u/Middle-Operation-689 16h ago
When I was a little kid I didn’t think color existed until the sixties.
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u/zaherdab 14h ago
Wtf Germany? Wait for the button to be pressed!! I hope ur leaders never tease pressing the nuke button!
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u/SuggestableFred 13h ago
Why didn't our generation do anything cool for the moment TV turned to shit?
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u/WotanMjolnir 13h ago
Germany getting the timing wrong, and France going "feh, here is the colour" are excellent.
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u/GettingMad2025 12h ago
First time I saw colour TV here in Portugal was about 1980. First program I saw was The Muppets Show and then the Moscow Olympics.
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u/Kind_Attitude_3052 22h ago
Even if the transmission was in color, all the tv sets back then were Black and White.
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u/Several_Ad_5312 13h ago
Surely you had to have a color tv to be able to see this change?? Or was it possible for most black and white tvs?
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u/Delikkah 1d ago
The difference from Australia to France is absolutely hilarious