CBS Studio Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CBS Studio Center is a television and film studio located in the Studio City district of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. It is located at 4024 Radford Avenue and takes up a triangular piece of land, with the Los Angeles River bisecting the site. The lot, which is not open to the public for tours, has 18 sound stages from 7,000 to 25,000 square feet; 220,000 square feet of office space; and 223 dressing rooms.
It is one of two studio facilities owned by CBS in Los Angeles, California; the other is Television City. The company also previously had ownership of two other studios: Columbia Square and the Paramount Pictures lot.
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[edit] History
Mack Sennett, a silent film producer and director, came to the San Fernando Valley and opened his new movie studio at this location (at what's now Ventura Boulevard and Radford Avenue) in May 1928. He previously operated a smaller studio on Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park (then called Edendale) where he produced films featuring the Keystone Kops, Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and Fatty Arbuckle.
After creating the Studio City lot, Sennett in five years was forced to file bankruptcy and the studio lot was sold off to another film company, Mascot Pictures. Mascot renamed the newly-acquired studio after itself, and the film company specialized in the format of the Saturday Afternoon Matinee, which were serials. By 1935, another film company, Monogram Pictures, along with Mascot and Consolidated Film Corporation merged together to form Republic Pictures Corporation. The studio lot was renamed Republic Studios. The new studio specialized in B-movies, including many Westerns starring the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne, all of whom get their first breaks with Republic.
In 1963, CBS Television came into the picture, where it signed a lease with Republic to become the primary lessee of the studio lot, and almost immediately began to place their network-produced filmed shows such as the long-running Gunsmoke and Rawhide in production there, and later, the classic comedy, Gilligan's Island. The piece of land at the northwestern edge of the lot where the lagoon scenes were filmed for Gilligan's Island were paved over in the mid-1990s to make room for a new parking structure.
The studio lot was renamed the CBS Studio Center. CBS purchased the studio lot outright in April 1967, nearly 39 years to the day it first opened. CBS invested money to build new soundstages, office buildings, and technical facilities. To make up for these investments, CBS began to rent out its studio lot for independent producers, and the newly-created MTM Enterprises (headed by actress Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband, Grant Tinker) became the Studio Center's primary client, beginning in 1971.
Moore's memorable sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, began filming here in 1971, along with its spinoffs, Rhoda and Phyllis. In July 1982, CBS formed a partnership with 20th Century Fox to share ownership of the Studio Center, thus once again renaming, this time as CBS/Fox Studios. However, that relationship was short-lived as Fox sold its interest of the Studio Center to MTM, and it became CBS-MTM Studios. In March 1992, the studio once again became CBS Studio Center, when MTM (whom themselves were later bought by 20th Century Fox's parent company, News Corporation, which interestingly owns the Fox network and several Fox affiliates, a number which were formerly affiliated with CBS) sold back its interest in the studio lot to CBS.
Today, the studio is one of the most active in the city for filming sitcoms. It is also the base for "Semester in L.A.", a six-week course by Columbia College Chicago.
The Studio Center will serve as a new home to CBS's Los Angeles flagship TV station, KCBS-TV, along with sister station KCAL-TV, as they will vacate Columbia Square to move into a newly-built office and studio facility located where the house for the hit CBS reality series, Big Brother, once stood.
[edit] Television shows
- 3rd Rock from the Sun
- A Different World
- American Gladiators
- Big Brother
- Big Valley
- Combat!
- Dave's World
- Evening Shade
- Falcon Crest
- Gilligan's Island
- Grace Under Fire
- Grounded for Life
- Gunsmoke
- Hill Street Blues
- Leave It To Beaver - first two seasons
- Less Than Perfect
- Lou Grant
- Malcolm in the Middle
- My Three Sons
- Newhart
- Passions
- Phyllis
- Rawhide
- Rhoda
- Rodney
- Remington Steele
- Roseanne
- Roundhouse
- Seinfeld
- Spin City
- St. Elsewhere
- Survivor
- That '70s Show
- That '80s Show
- The Bob Newhart Show
- The Larry Sanders Show
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show
- The New WKRP in Cincinnati
- The White Shadow
- Thirtysomething
- Titus
- The Wild Wild West
- Will & Grace
- WKRP in Cincinnati
[edit] Theatrical films
- The Addams Family
- April Fools
- Boys on the Side
- Dr. Dolittle
- Dr. Dolittle 2
- Father of the Bride
- I Love Trouble
- Le Mans
- Little Big Man
- Mr. Wrong
- Scream 3
