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CBS New York, Deep Studio History…Part 2

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Eyes Of A Generation.com

CBS New York, Deep Studio History…Part 2

Before we start, a word on the photo. We see three brand new Norelco PC60s…so new their CBS Color logos have yet to be applied. I think this may be in Studio 43 or 44. Can anyone tell?

The following is part of an chain of emails a few months ago between myself, Game Show Network Historian David Schwartz and CBS staffer Bruce Martin. The original question was “what were the first shows at The CBS Broadcast Center”?

Before it became the CBS Broadcast Center, it was the CBS Production Center. What would later become the studios on the second floor were giant rehearsal halls and scenery storage areas. Other parts of the building were used as offices for the shows, including Ed Sullivan’s production office.

Over the summer of 1964, 524 East 57th Street was a busy place making ready for operations and programs to begin arriving in August. The transfer from Grand Central to the Broadcast Center was done in a gradual process over the course of a few weeks. Production was rolled in slowly too, as I think only Studios 43, 44, 45 and 46 were equipped with the new Norelco color cameras. 41 and 42 are the biggest studios and as you will see, they were not put into service till November of ’64.

The WCBS Radio local news may have been the first broadcast from there, and it is possible ‘The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite’ was among the first network television shows to originate there from the new newsroom studio on the first floor. All the big new studios were on the second floor.

The Cronkite newsroom studio at the Broadcast Center, looked almost exactly like their newsroom studio in The Graybar Building. As a side note, I just found out yesterday in a conversation with CBS Floor Manager Locke Wallace, who was at CBS from 1955 till 1997, that ‘Douglas Edwards And The News’ had come from Studio 41 at Grand Central. When Cronkite took over, he too reported from Studio 41 until the move to The Graybar Building newsroom around 1959. WCBS local news was in the smaller Studio 42 at Grand Central. Early on, Douglas Edwards had come from the CBS HQ building at 485 Madison Avenue and later from Leiderkranz Hall. The Edwards move to Grand Central’s Studio 41 probably came around 1957.

Just to clear up any confusion, the first two CBS studios ever were 41 and 42 at Grand Central. When the move to The Broadcast Center came, it was decided as an honorarium, to name the two biggest studios there 41 and 42 after their historic predecessors at Grand Central. At GC, there was also Studio 43 and 44, but they were not productions studios…they were control and telecine facilities, but were called studios.

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Bruce Martin wrote:

When I first arrived at the CBS Broadcast Center in August,1964, here were the studio assignments:
Studio 41 – Election set and light for Campaign ’64 that did not air until November 3rd.
Studio 42 – basically dark until the end of November when ‘Love of Life’ and ‘Secret Storm’ came over from Leiderkranz Hall.
Studio 43 – ‘Captain Kangaroo’ and ‘Mr. Mayor’
Studio 44 – ‘Search for Tomorrow’
Studio 45 – ‘Guiding Light’
Studio 46 – WCBS-TV local news, some commercial tapings, and there was a 10:00 am Mike Wallace local news show. Also, ‘Sunrise Semester’ was here.

Outside Studios:
Studio 50 – Sullivan/Gleason/Candid Camera/Gary Moore prime time
Studio 52 – Line/Secret/Truth/Password/Ted Mack/Alumni Fun/Jack Benny when visiting
Studio 61 – ‘The Edge of Night’ – see below, it obviously came over a little later.
Studio 65 – ‘As the World Turns’

I believe World Turns and Edge both started at the DuMont TeleCenter Studios at 205 East 67th Street both on April 2, 1956. Edge moved to Studio 72 after Verdict moved to Hollywood and World Turns moved to Studio 65 around 1963. Studio 65 was reserved for a weekly Judy Garland show, but in April, 1963 she decided to do all her shows at CBS Television City in Hollywood.

Edge moved to Studio 61 after some David Susskind drama specials left. Sometimes, “Candid Camera” and “On Broadway Tonight” aired there until the end of the summer, 1965. Edge moved there in the fall of 1965. Bruce
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David Schwartz wrote:

Studio 57 was called The Peace Theater, 1280 Fifth Avenue at 109th Street. CBS used it for the original Field Sequential color broadcasts in 1951. The color shows ended in October 1951. It was used by Mike & Buff, The Egg and I, Valiant Lady, Red Brown & the Rocket Rangers and Hotel Cosmopolitan (1957-58). That appears to be the last time I find a show originating from there. Mike & Buff may have also come from another studio (there is an overlap in shows there in 1952-53)

Studio 58 was the Town Theater, 851 Ninth Avenue. It later became a studio for WNET, then Unitel. Fred Waring and Vaughn Monroe did their shows from there, as did Mama and Playhouse 90. Later Sesame Street called it home, and later it was used by Jane Pratt in the 1990’s and Emmerill Live for the Food Network. There are probably other shows that I don’t know about yet.

Studio 72 was home to The Verdict is Yours. That show was moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 1960 and I found no other shows coming from that studio. It later became Reeves Teletape, then Conran’s Dept. Store and Staples. David Schwartz

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Just to clarify things a bit, there were other CBS theater studios in use and continued for a few years after the Broadcast Center opened, namely Studio 52 and 50.

I want to add a little to the Studio 72 conversation. This was the only CBS color facility on the east coast. It had 4 RCA TK41s and 1 TK40. It went into service in the fall of 1954 after extensive remodeling of the old vaudeville theater was completed. Several color specials were done there including ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Jack And The Beanstalk’. By around 1956, CBS had cut its color programming to next to nothing from the east coast and the little color done was from Television City. Believe it or not, the studio got little use, and even when it did get used, the color cameras and tape machines there shot the a few specials and overflow shows in black and white. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee

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15 responses to “CBS New York, Deep Studio History…Part 2”

  1. Doug Douglass

    The opening of “Mama” showing the family photo album, began with “I remember San Francisco and the house we lived in on Steiner Street….My little sister Dagmar, my big brother Nels and Papa, but most of all I remember (pause) Mama” The intro was done by Rosemary Rice, elder sister, Katrin for the entire 1949-1957 run.

  2. Michael Carraher

    WCBS Newsradio 88 was actually the last unit to move to the Broadcast Center in 2001. It moved from 485 Madison to Black Rock before finally moving to the West 57th St.

  3. James Shea

    Reported in the 11/30/64 issue of Broadcasting magazine: “CBS Completes N.Y. Move — Three connected structures consolidate practically all activity; two separate theater-studios retained — The new CBS Broadcast Center in New York, consolidating studios and facilities that were dispersed among 14 different locations, is now in full operation. …Units of the CBS-TV Network, CBS-owned WCBS-TV New York, the CBS Radio Network, the CBS News Division and various central staff services are located there.”

  4. James Shea

    Reported in the 9/21/64 issue of Broadcasting magazine: “The new CBS Studio 41 on West 57th Street will be the origination point for the network’s election night coverage. This will be the first use of the new studio, which is now being equipped with 100 digital display panels.”

  5. James Shea

    Reported in the 8/03/64 issue of Broadcasting magazine: “The CBS Radio Network inaugurated its new automated broadcast center last week, pulling stakes at its two New York East Side studios and moving into facilities at 524 West 57th Street. …Eventually, the new center will also be home of CBS-TV production. By next year, the company expects to have finished moving equipment and personnel from its East Side quarters to either its new corporate headquarters now under construction on Avenue of the Americas or the 57th Street center.”

  6. Todd Weiss

    This is truly fascinating stuff….. as a 27 year Technician here at CBS News I never really knew just how much history I did not know about the building and the Network that I have worked at for so long……thank you all for this ……

  7. David Fell

    You bring up logos. How were they typically applied? Decals? Silk screen?

  8. Dennis Degan

    I have my own additions concerning Studios 58 and 72. It’s true that WNET occupied what was formerly CBS Studio 58, using it as both a studio and as their on-air master control. Dick Cavett’s PBS show originated from this studio from 1977 to 1982. WNET’s MC was on the 2nd floor in the space that was originally the film projection booth for the theater. In 1983, Reeves/Teletape took over the Studio 58 lease (even though WNET had moved out years before to the Hudson Hotel) to use as the new Sesame Street studio. The SS move resulted from the fact that R/T had sold the 81st Street Studio (former CBS Studio 72). R/T called the new SS studio ‘RT3’, as it was the third studio to be operated by R/T at the time (R/T also operated the Ed Sullivan Theater, producing a number of specials there for Showtime, Merv Griffin’s NY shows, and finally ‘Kate & Allie’). I called the new Sesame Street studio ‘The 55th Street Studio’ since it was at the corner of 55th Street and 9th Ave. For Sesame Street, the former projection booth and WNET Master Control became a live sound effects studio for Dick Maitland and a 1-inch VTR edit room for the show itself. It wasn’t until R/T went out of business in 1987 that Unitel took over the 55th Street Studio for production of Sesame Street. Sesame Street moved to its current studio facility at the Kaufman-Astoria Studios in 1991. After SS, other shows that originated from the 55th Street Studio included a short-lived talk show starring Gordon Elliott (Gordon since had shows on the Food Network, is credited with discovering Paula Deen, and now is EP of ‘The Chew’ on ABC). I edited the talk show at Unitel.
    The former Studio 58 site is now occupied by a new building housing the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.
    Concerning former Studio 72, CBS sold it to Teletape in 1967. Teletape renovated the studio to the tune of 3 million dollars, basically gutting the two control rooms and the back of what was originally the orchestra seating. They hastily built one control room where the original monochrome CR was located. The color CR became what it was originally: Part of the lobby entrance to the theater itself (now studio). Teletape later merged with Reeves Sound to become Reeves/Teletape. In addition to Sesame Street, the studio had been home to lots of productions I was a part of. These include a number of ‘Broadway on Showtime’ productions, a pilot for a syndicated ‘Home’ Show starring Chuck Woolery and Nancy Glass, and an NBC show ‘Love, Sydney’. The studio even served as the production stage for all the ‘Jerry Langford Show’ scenes in the Martin Scorcese film ‘King of Comedy’. In 1982, ‘Search For Tomorrow’ left CBS for NBC and in the process relocated production to the 81st Street Studio. This was where the infamous ‘Last-Minute Live’ show took place, which may have been a publicity stunt copying the plot from the movie ‘Tootsie’, released the same year.
    When the 81st Street Studio was torn down, only the stage part of the building was demolished to become the site of a high-rise apartment building. The facade still stands where first the Conran’s and later the Staples stores were located. The theater’s lobby entrance now serves as the entrance to the apartment building. Here’s what it looked like (and probably still does) in 2004, with the apartment building rising from the site of the studio:
    https://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/557875987/

  9. Judles Samuels Kay

    And before that..there was the Dumont Studios where The Molly Goldberg Show was Live under sizzling hot lights…

  10. David Breneman

    Which studio is this, with the Iconoscope cameras? Is that Grand Central?

  11. Clark Humphrey

    So two half-hour soaps shared one studio, and the last two 15-minute soaps at the time (GL and SFT) each had its own studio.

  12. Dave Miller

    FYI here’s a 1938 photo of the Sheffield Farms plant at 524 WEST 57th Street; the corner of West 57th Street and 11th Avenue. You’ve probably heard the old stories of cow bones in the basement, and flies on Cronkite’s set? Photo: Wurts Bros. via the Museum of the City of New York.

  13. Wally Roper

    Great history! Where did Garry Moore do his Daytime show?

  14. Russell Ross

    Also…..I believe that the Broadcast Center on 57th street was a converted dairy factory in the early 1900’s. Also, David mentioned the tv show “I Remember Mama”…. if you recall, the opening of the show was a book being page turned by P.A. Mary Bonner who years later became the producer of “Another World” soap opera from the NBC Brooklyn Studios. David also mentioned the soap “As The World Turns”. That show’s final days wound up being recorded at NBC’s Brooklyn Studios. I believe ATWT was the last show to be done in NBC’s Brooklyn studios. As of this writing, the studio has been dark for many years.

  15. Russell Ross

    Fascinating story “thank you”.

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