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STUDIOS AT 30 ROCKEFELLER PLAZZA

HippieGuy said:
I always thought SNL was out of studios in Brooklyn..

Were they ever?

I left NYC in '68, so excuse my naivete'
;)
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They did a few shows there in the fall of 1976 when 8-H was being used for election night coverage.
 
What studio did the very early NBC telecasts come from?

I understand that 3-H was used for television in the pre-war days.

Is the studio still in operation?
 
HHH said:
What studio did the very early NBC telecasts come from?

I understand that 3-H was used for television in the pre-war days.

Is the studio still in operation?
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Wikipedia says that 3H was the first studio at 30 Rock to be used for TV production. According to the same source, that studio is now decommissioned.
There's some more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Building
 
Cosmopolite said:
When "Dr. Oz" vacates 6A for Jimmy Fallon, he'll move to ABC's Studio 23 at 320 West 66th Street (former home of "All My Children"), next to "The View" in Studio 24.
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Actually, now I heard Oz is moving into ABC's Lincoln Square building, where Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was taped. Millionaire is moving to 106th street.
 
Did SNL originate from 8-H in 1976, when Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles $3k for a 3-song reunion gig? (Which of course, never happened, although John and Paul [who was visiting John at the Dakota during the Wings Over America tour that year], seriously considered dropping in on the show.)

ixnay
 
SNL was never in Brooklyn. In 1999 NBC sold the building at 1268 East 14th Street in Midwood. It became JC Studios. Buyers were sons of a decades-long NBC set designer. From 2000-2010 CBS's "As The World Turns" was taped there. The show left the air after 54 years. The facility is currently used for film and television production.
 
Anybody know when (and why) NBC stopped using 8-H for election night? Clips from the 1960 (Kennedy-Nixon) coverage are on You Tube. The room was filled with people and office machines and the walls covered with results of elections in each state (sort of like the outfield wall in a ballpark with scores from every game being played). It really seemed like an all-out effort compared to today when election night coverage seems almost routine (regular nightly news set, some people in the background and a couple of guys in front). I've read 8-H was used to election night coverage going back to radio. From the looks of things, they had to have a lot of people there to actually take raw votes from various jurisdictions and do calculations and then prepare copy for air talent. The whole thing seems less impressive today.
 
8H was used in 2000.
In 2004, coverage was in a temporary studio built on Rockefeller Plaza.
In 2008, they used 8G (typically used for "Football Night in America")
In 2012 they used 3B ("Nightly News")

So, I'm guessing the last time they used 8H was in 2000, unless they used it again in 2002 for mid-term coverage.
 
Sounds like the trend is to smaller studios each time. Probably smaller staff, too (although located away from the studio).
Now that NBC is not owned by the primary tenant in the building, I wonder how much longer Comcast will keep NBC at 30 Rock. I'm sure rents are much cheaper back in Secaucus. Or Charlotte.
 
The old MSNBC facility in Secaucus is now the home of MLB Network, so that's not an option. If memory serves, NBC got a pretty substantial tax break to bring MSNBC over to 30 Rock and to commit to a long-term tenancy there. It's spent fairly heavily over the past few years on a top-to-bottom overhaul of the plant, including the MSNBC studios in 3A and 3K, the new Nightly studio in 3B, the new WNBC studio in 3C, new control rooms for 8H and 1A, and now the relocation of the Tonight Show from LA to 6A. You don't make a long series of capital investments like that if you're about to move out of town.
 
FredLeonard said:
Now that NBC is not owned by the primary tenant in the building, I wonder how much longer Comcast will keep NBC at 30 Rock. I'm sure rents are much cheaper back in Secaucus. Or Charlotte.
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Rent is cheaper in Charlotte and so is the cost of living for potential employees. It might be a good decision for some programs but you have to have a strong presence in NYC especially for high profile programming.
 
8H was used for the last Summer Olympics. Things will be easier now that the Sports Channel has the Clairol Plant in Stamford.
 
fybush said:
The old MSNBC facility in Secaucus is now the home of MLB Network, so that's not an option. If memory serves, NBC got a pretty substantial tax break to bring MSNBC over to 30 Rock and to commit to a long-term tenancy there. It's spent fairly heavily over the past few years on a top-to-bottom overhaul of the plant, including the MSNBC studios in 3A and 3K, the new Nightly studio in 3B, the new WNBC studio in 3C, new control rooms for 8H and 1A, and now the relocation of the Tonight Show from LA to 6A. You don't make a long series of capital investments like that if you're about to move out of town.
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They left Secaucas to consolidate the operation. BOC is wall to wall network feeds and the O&O MCRs were moved out of 30 Rock to Crawford Communications. The Microsoft and NBC venture in Secaucas did indeed get substantial tax benefits becuase they were proving a couple of hundred jobs to the area. Every piece of equipment that was purchased by MSNBC/CNBC/ or NBC had to be accounted for. The State of NJ had to be sure that every piece of equipment purchased was actually going to MSNBC. When they decided to move out of Secaucas the state wanted some money back and I am not sure how that worked out.
 
I believe that from the Gemini 5 mission in 1965 through the end of the Apollo lunar landings in 1972, 8-H was used as the anchor studio for NBC's space coverage, branded as the "NBC News Space Center".

One huge map on one of the walls was a giant world map showing the position of a spacecraft. Once astronauts began going to the Moon, it would be replaced with a map showing the area between Earth and the Moon with the spacecraft's position; and once the command module was in lunar orbit, it would be replaced with a map of the moon showing the location the CM was over. During landing missions, a model of the lunar module would be "stopped" over the approximate area where it landed.

For most of that time, there was the election-night anchor desk that was mounted on what was normally the balcony of 8-H, and the anchor(s) would face a camera. They could also turn around and see the entire studio, which besides the maps, included full-size spacecraft mockups (8-H was the only studio at 30 Rock that could accommodate full-size mockups of the Apollo command and lunar modules).
 
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