The Legendary CBS Night Mare…The Scene Of The Crime

The Legendary CBS Night Mare…The Scene Of The Crime

Since 1936, when CBS Radio converted The Hammerstein Theater to a broadcast studio, magnetic field interference has been a problem at Studio 50. When it was converted to television in 1950, things got more difficult, but why? The problem is the building circled in each photo.

For those of us that don’t live in New York, or have an intimate knowledge of the city, I wanted to finally show you where “the problem” lived. The problem was a huge Con Ed generator inside the creme colored building. In the photo on the left, the tan building with the fire stars is the back of the old CBS Studio 52 (later the nightclub Studio 54) and we are on 53rd Street looking east toward Broadway. The dark building to the right of the creme generator building is the stage entrance side of CBS Studio 50.

In the photo on the right, we are again on 53rd Street, but now looking west with the white arrow pointing to the stage entrance for David Letterman’s show in Studio 50. The highest point between the arrow and circle is the Studio 50 dressing room elevator tower.

When Jackie Gleason returned to television in 1962 with ‘American Scene Magazine’, he wanted to do it in color and a few months before the show began production, CBS rented a color truck from Video Tape Productions with TK41s. Had it worked, the plan was to move the TK41s from Studio 72 (CBS only NYC color studio) to 50. Try as they may, the interference was too bad not only in the studio with the cameras, but in the truck too which was parked on 53rd Street. Even after moving the truck to Broadway, no amount of mu metal would work. It wasn’t as bad for the black and white cameras, but they too were internally modified with mu metal and mesh.

In ’65, the Norelco plumbicon cameras arrived but preparations began months before with a visits from Phillips engineers for magnetic field measurements which were done at 50 and 52. The six cameras that Norelco built for 50 were called PC72s as they had special modifications and very heavy mu metal shielding. Everyone swears the pictures were great, but…I think that once the Sullivan show went color from Studio 50 on October 31, 1965, there were problems Gady Rienhold remembers there was a period of either a few weeks or months that the show was done from The Broadcast Center. Suspiciously, within eighteen months, Marconi Mark VII color cameras were installed at Studio 50. For some reason, they got along with “Mr Generator” a lot better than the Norelcos. Thanks to Dennis Degan for the photos. What would we do without him?

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