The Canadian Broadcasting Centre, located in Toronto, Ontario, is the broadcast headquarters and master control point for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's English-language television and radio services. It also contains studios for local and regional French language productions and is also home to the North American Broadcasters Association.
The Canadian Broadcasting Centre is located at 250 Front Street West in Downtown Toronto, directly across the street from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It is within walking distance of Union Station, the Rogers Centre, and the CN Tower. It is also connected to the city's PATH underground pathway system.
The 13-storey complex is partly located on the site of the First Ontario Parliament Buildings, which stood on the block bounded by Wellington, John, Front, and Simcoe streets between 1832 and 1903. Constructed at a cost of $350 million, the Canadian Broadcasting Centre opened in 1993 and was designed in order to accommodate CBC employees who were housed at various buildings throughout downtown Toronto at the time. The building required over 12 years of planning and another four years of construction. Television production is located on the upper floors (with many programs recorded in the three rooftop studios), and radio on the second and third floors. Some of the larger sound stages are rented out to outside movie and television productions, such as Global's Canadian versions of Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?. The building sits on rubber pads to reduce unwanted noise and vibrations. It is for that reason that all of the studios are located in the core of the building. The building also has 4 1250Kw Cummins generators to provide power to critical loads during a power failure. The atrium was named for Barbara Frum, a noted Canadian journalist. It is used as the venue for special broadcasts, including federal election coverage and the CBC 2000 Today millennium special, as well as episodes of Canadian Antiques Roadshow.
The building contains the Glenn Gould Studio, a performance and recording studio.
The CBC Museum, which is dedicated to preserving the memories and physical artifacts of the national broadcaster's heritage, is located on the first floor of the building. As of 2010 exhibits include the original "Tickle Trunk" from Mr. Dressup (Casey's treehouse from the same series is on display in the lobby just outside the entrance to the museum), a portion of the original set used for Friendly Giant, Muppets puppets from Sesame Park, video clips from numerous programs, and original sound and tape equipment. Additional exhibits of memorabilia from CBC's history are also located in other areas of the first floor.
The analogous facility for CBC's French-language networks is Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal. The CBC's corporate headquarters are located in Ottawa in the CBC Ottawa Broadcast Centre.
Upon completion it contained 3 radio studios (including the Glenn Gould Theatre), 19 radio production studios, 3 television studios, 2 local television studios, 2 all purpose studios, and one national news studio.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||