NBC Radio City Studios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NBC Radio City Studios is the name given to both a radio and television studio complex in New York's Rockefeller Center and the former radio-TV complex located at the northeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, California.

1 Radio City, New York
2 Live from Hollywood
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Radio City, New York

The Radio City name was first given to the radio facilities in Rockefeller Center's GE Building (originally the RCA Building) occupied mostly by NBC since the early 1930s. They also provided the name for Radio City Music Hall, the movie and concert venue in Rockefeller Center that is just north of the GE Building. The radio suites were eventually converted to TV use.

The largest and most prominent NBC studio at Radio City -- and among the largest at NBC on either coast -- was and still is Studio 8-H, former home of the NBC Symphony under Arturo Toscanini and the current home of Saturday Night Live.

While NBC has divested itself of its company-owned radio holdings, tickets for SNL and Late Night with Conan O'Brien (taped in Studio 6-A) have proudly borne the legend Radio City into the current decade. Among other production suites in the New York Radio City Studios are Studio 3-C, housing NBC Nightly News, Studio 3-B, housing Dateline NBC; and Studio 3-K (NBC Sports). NBC has conducted tours of its Radio City studios in Rockefeller Center since 1933.

Among the young pages who've helped the NBC-tour customers and studio-audience members at the Radio City Studios before going on to media success have been original Today Show host Dave Garroway and longtime Today personality Willard Scott; original Tonight Show creator/host Steve Allen and his announcer/sidekick Gene Rayburn; broadcast journalist Ted Koppel; TV host Regis Philbin; TV producer Marcy Carsey; actress Kate Jackson; and movie/broadcasting mogul Michael Eisner.

The Radio City studio from which Tonight was broadcast during the Jack Paar and early Johnny Carson years (it first originated at the Hudson Theatre, which is on 44th Street) is now WNBC-TV's main news studio - Studio 6-B.

[edit] Live from Hollywood

The West Coast Radio City opened in 1938 and served as headquarters to the NBC Radio Networks' (Red and Blue) West Coast operations. It served as a replacement for NBC's radio broadcast center in San Francisco, which had been around since the network's formation in 1927. Since NBC never owned a radio station in Los Angeles, the network's West Coast programming originated from its San Francisco station (KPO-AM, which later became KNBC-AM, and is now KNBR).

In January 1949, NBC launched its newest television station for Los Angeles, KNBH (Channel 4; now KNBC) from Radio City. However, as television production was increasing for NBC, the network and its then-parent RCA decided to build to a television studio, nicknamed NBC Color City, that would be exclusively equipped for color broadcasting. Much of the same reasons why CBS eventually built Television City in the early 1950s, the television facilities at Radio City gradually became too small for NBC to produce its television broadcasts.

The newly-christened NBC Color City Studios opened in March 1955, as the first television studio designed specially for the origination of color television broadcasting, although their rivals, ABC and CBS would gradually add color broadcasting to their studio facilities in the later years.

KNBC moved to a new building at NBC Studios in Burbank (also known as 3000 West Alameda Avenue) in 1962. In 1964, the West Coast Radio City building was demolished, as NBC moved more of their West Coast television operations to the Burbank facility. Since being demolished, the former site of the West Coast Radio City has been occupied by a bank.