The first commercial network television broadcast in color in the United States occurred over the CBS field-sequential colorOffsite Link television system on June 25, 1951, when a musical variety special titled PremiereOffsite Link was shown over a network of five East Coast CBS affiliates. Viewing was highly restricted as the program could not be seen on black-and-white sets, and VarietyOffsite Link estimated that only thirty prototype color receivers were available in the New York area.
Fascinating how long the change actually took from that point. Most people still had b/w sets to see the shows recorded in b/w hrough the 60s, even movies only started moving to colour mid 60s. We were pretty late getting our first colour set, around 76 I think. Later on it was odd to see some series I’d imagined to be colour to be b/w.