Condition: Excellent

 

American vintage Innovative Television Equipment (ITE) Rolling Tripod for tv studio or outside broadcast camera

Circa 1984

Condition is Excellent Used Condition

Max height when extended 164cm

General ITE Information

The three-letter logo, ITE, on the side of the company's world headquarters in Woodland Hills, Calif., may not have the familiar ring of IBM or RCA, but in its own way it spells out a success story that is no less impressive than those of such globally influential super-companies. For ITE stands for Innovative Television Equipment, one of the country's leading operations in both the design and manufacture of camera support equipment. And even if you don't recognize the name, the chances are you're using one of their camera heads, tripods, dollies, pedestals, carts or other accessories in a wide array of applications ranging from broadcast and industrial to educational and closed-circuit television.

The company was formed in the late '60s by president Bert Rosenberg and vice president/treasurer Stanton Hollingsworth, who originally met while working for Houston Fearless, a well-known support equipment manufacturer at that time. "I was there for some 12 years before teaming up with Stanton and leaving to form ITE in May 1969," explains Rosenberg, who graduated in engineering from UCLA in the '50s. "It just seemed like a natural move for both of us, especially as the marketplace was wide open at the time and there were an enormous amount of changes taking place in the business. You've got to remember that even back then, there were vast reductions in the weight of cameras along with all the new, emerging color technology and lower cost equipment, and it opened the doors for innovations and changes in the support business as well."

"Bert had seen the weight of a television camera drop dramatically, from over 300 pounds down to 150 pounds, while we were still at Houston Fearless," comments Hollingsworth, "and realized at the same time there simply weren't any new pieces of camera support equipment out on the market to deal with such developments. So we sat down and came up with a plan and a clear-cut objective to create a whole new line of support equipment to service the emerging lines of low-weight, lower-cost color television cameras."

"The broadcast support business is a very small, tight fraternity, and no one seemed to have a handle on these or any other future developments," continues Rosenberg. "So when we went ahead and formed ITE, we got a lot of initial encouragement and enthusiasm from all the big boys at the major camera manufacturers. It's always been a good balance, as my background as a mechanical designer and engineer is complemented and balanced by Stanton's training as a financial expert and CPA - those were the basis of the company, making sure we covered both ends of the business."

A few products to start

Having struck out on their own, Rosenberg and Hollingsworth decided to test the waters by initially designing and manufacturing just three or four products. "I sat down and designed a studio pedestal, a pan and tilt head, a tripod and a dolly

that was our complete line. We also started by getting all of these manufactured by an outside company," he adds. By contrast, today, ITE manufactures over 50% of its product line on its own premises, and that line has expanded to over 85 products - "so many, we just stopped counting," laughs Rosenberg.

Despite such impressive statistics, it wasn't always an easy road for the two partners, as they willingly admit. "All that initial enthusiasm and encouragement from the major camera manufacturers evaporated pretty quickly," says Hollingsworth. "After about half an hour!" recalls Rosenberg. "Of course everyone is very wary of dealing with a brand new company, even if they know your past record is good," he continues. "And if someone's going to spend half a million bucks on cameras, they're not going to take many chances on the heads turning out to be duds. Consequently, the first few years were extremely rough for us. It was very slow, and things weren't helped much when we were also hit by a very bad recession in the early to mid-'70s.

"In fact, I remember a time when we were sitting on some 75 pedestals stacked out at a warehouse at LAX that were just collecting dust and taking up an awful lot of space," recalls Rosenberg. "Business was so slow that we seriously considered selling them off cheap as seaanchors! Fortunately, things turned around in the nick of time, and our tenacity and stubbornness not to give in suddenly paid off. And since then, we haven't looked back. But we've never forgotten those days of struggle either, and I think that's always helped us concentrate on the value of good service and the highest possible quality of product."

Much of ITE's success is due to sound, long-term financial planning, as Hollingsworth explains. "When we started, we knew that the expense of manufacturing our own prototypes would be prohibitive, and that would severely limit our ability to experiment with a design. So we immediately began looking around for the most cost-effective methods of manufacturing, and after extensive research, we decided on opening up an Australian company for the simple reason that at that time, one tooling hour was costing just under $4, while in the U.S. the same work was costing closer to $40 - ten times as much as in Australia. So it was primarily an economically motivated move, which then allowed us the luxury of being able to tryout various prototype designs at a relatively low cost.

"We basically go through three prototype stages," reports Hollingsworth. "We start with the engineering prototype, in which Bert designs a new product to specifically accommodate a new piece of camera equipment. We'll then produce five or 10 of these prototypes and then choose between six and 10 dealers to test them, and see what comments and suggestions they have to make.

"The second stage is the redesign process," he continues. "We incorporate all of these ideas and changes, and then do a sizable run of the product. For instance, if it's a studio pedestal, we might make 10 to 15. If it's a tripod, the figures would be closer to 25 to 50. We then distribute those to the field as finished products, but we also track them all very carefully. We make a point of following up by both mail and phone calls to get more comments and suggestions - anything to add to a final evaluation of the product."

Camera House Price: £74.00

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The Innovative Television Equipment (ITE) Rolling Tripod TV studio/outside broadcast camera is shown in Movie Film & Video Equipment.

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