What Happened to NBC's Peacock? Why It Vanished Nine Years After NBC Went Color

NBC went all-color in November 1966, yet its peacock kept promising "living color" for nine more years. This is the story of a bird built to sell RCA television sets, and why NBC finally took it off the air. In 1956, about one American home in a thousand owned a color set, and nearly every one was an RCA, the company that owned NBC. The eleven-feathered peacock was aimed at everyone else, a gray fan on a gray screen. On January 1, 1976, it gave way to a red and blue N that reportedly cost up to $750,000. You will learn: • How a dinner-table question became America's most famous network logo • Why color owners turned their knobs whenever the bird appeared • How the peacock outlasted NBC's last black-and-white show • Why a Nebraska public station's N cost NBC far more than its own • How a line of fine print kept the retired bird alive until 1979 If you grew up with a black-and-white set, you may remember leaning closer as the gray feathers opened, or the night they finally came up in color. Share what you remember in the comments. Subscribe for quiet, careful histories of the screens we grew up with. #NBCPeacock #LivingColor #NBC #ColorTV #RCA #RCAVictor #TVLogos #RetroTV #TVHistory #VintageTelevision #1950s