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Bob Barker Marks Videotape’s Anniversary

The Associated Press | by Frazier Moore

On Jan. 22, 1957, NBC’s weekday game show Truth or Consequences, with Barker presiding, became the first program to be prerecorded on videotape for subsequent airing in all time zones. That first Ampex machine had the bulk of an industrial kitchen range, cost upward of $45,000 (about $200,000 in 2016 dollars) and recorded only in monochrome.