First Commercial Color Broadcast -- was by CBS, on June 25, 1951 at 4:35PM EST, over station WCBS, New York, for the Ed Sullivan show. This one-hour gala color premier could only be received by about two dozen sets like the one shown above. The final color broadcast using this mechanical spinning wheel system was on October 20, 1951, with the North Carolina-Maryland football game. There were other color shows listed in the TV Guide for that week, but they were never broadcast. The reason given for the demise of the CBS system was the request by the US Defense Department to stop manufacturing the sets to save critical materials for the impending Korean conflict.
You can see a better image of the color test pattern in the "Photo Reminiscences" area.