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Metromedia Square (KTTV) or Golden West Videotape (KTLA): Which was better?

J

johnnya2k6

From the '70s to the mid-'80s, Metromedia Square/Fox Television Center (KTTV's old home) and Golden West Videotape (on KTLA's lot) -- though right next door to each other on Sunset -- were two of the busiest television studios away from the networks' facilities. But which one was the better studio?

Here were some of the shows taped at Metromedia/FTC:[/b][/b]
The Norman Lear comedies (Maude, The Jeffersons, One Day At A Time, etc.)
Jeopardy!
Gimme A Break!
Dance Fever
The Merv Griffin Show
Soul Train
Mama's Family
In Living Color
Small Wonder
Studs

Golden West Videotape:
Donny And Marie (the '70s show, not the 1999 talk show done on the Sony lot)
Name That Tune (Tom Kennedy and Jim Lange versions)
The Dating/Newlywed Games
Face The Music
Solid Gold
WKRP In Cincinnati
Hour Magazine

KTTV moved out of Metromedia Square and into its own building in the mid-'90s, while in 2000 Metromedia sold the building to the L.A. Unified School District. Three years later, it was demolished to make way for a new high school on that land.

Golden West Videotape meanwhile is now Tribune Studios (Tribune being KTLA's owner), and television production is still going on there with Judge Judy and the current run of Family Feud being taped. I'll have to say that even though a small number of shows originated there in the '70s compared to the very busy Metromedia/KTTV, Golden West was the better studio.

(By the way...when I first brought this up on the game shows newsgroup years ago, I said that The Great Space Coaster was done at KTTV. But they were not; even though Metromedia co-produced the show with Sunbow Productions, TGSC was taped at Reeves Teletape in New York where "Sesame Street" and "The Electric Company" used to call home. A video of the end credits on YouTube confirms this.

Oh...where there ANY popular children's shows produced at Metromedia or Golden West?)

Jonathan Allen
 
johnnya2k6 said:
Oh...where there ANY popular children's shows produced at Metromedia or Golden West?)
Click to expand...

...as http://www.oldtvtickets.com/archives1/2006/01/krofft_supersta.html shows, "The Krofft Superstar Hour" with The Bay City Rollers taped on Stage 6 at KTLA/Golden West. And, as writer Mark Evanier says somewhere on http://www.newsfromme.com/, NBC ran that thing for four years after production ended. Popular? Depends on your definition (allegedly, the Kroffts and the NBC programming brass weren't even aware of three years of those runs; Evanier found out about it while travelling in the South and catching one of the later reruns on an Alabama station). At least it looks like the Kroffts used KTLA/Golden West frequently for their material ("Donny & Marie" was also a Krofft product)...
 
First off, a question...didn't Hour Magazine also tape across the street at Metromedia/FTC later in its run? I could have sworn it happen.

Anywho, to the intial question, both were/are seem to fine facilities, especially since Tribune invested tons of money to upgrade the studio lot over the years. Many of my favorite shows originated from 5746 Sunset Boulevard (Metromedia/FTC), so I guess I go with them. I could have wished that Fox could have built a cental television studio here in Los Angeles (much like NBC), that could at least rival NBC Burbank and CBS Television City. Fox has all their broadcast properties in town spread throughout West Los Angeles (in the case of Fox Sports Net West and Prime Ticket, in downtown near Staples Center)...KTTV and KCOP have their own facility, the Fox Cable Networks have their own building about a mile or so away, and the Fox Network headquarters are on the 20th Century Fox lot in nearby Century City.

Television City and its sister studio in the San Fernando Valley are probably busier than they ever been, with so many filmed sitcoms (most of them airing on other networks besides CBS) and reality shows (pretty much all of Fox's and ABC's shows).

Let's also throw in another facility that was quite busy for TV production from about the 60s to at least the mid-90s...Universal Studios Hollywood.
 
Is the ABC Television Center Studios in Burbank (or was it Glendale?) still around or have all ABC productions been shifted over to Disney's lot? When I visited LA in 2001 and 2002, the map I had showed a listing for the ABC TV Center, but I don't know how current that was.

It was interesting to me, when I visited in 2001 (and again in 2002), that KTLA's tower still had their classic 5-logo which at that point hadn't been used in at least 5 or 6 or years (on-air).
 
Tim-In-Houston said:
Is the ABC Television Center Studios in Burbank (or was it Glendale?) still around or have all ABC productions been shifted over to Disney's lot? When I visited LA in 2001 and 2002, the map I had showed a listing for the ABC TV Center, but I don't know how current that was.
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The ABC Television Center on Prospect Ave. (where KABC was also based until 2000 when they moved to Glendale) is now The Prospect Studios. Besides "General Hospital", "Grey's Anatomy", its upcoming spinoff, and "The Shield" also film there as well.

Jonathan Allen
 
CORRECTION: The Tom Kennedy "Name That Tune" (and Cross-Wits, another Ralph Edwards game show) was done at KTTV, while KTLA served home to the Jim Lange version years later.

Another game show that was also taped at KTTV: Playboy's "Everything Goes", which was the first of its kind for cable. A 1984 BBC documentary on the U.S. game show craze has a clip of it (censored, of course): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCnbfpjjU8U
 
johnnya2k6 said:
Tim-In-Houston said:
Is the ABC Television Center Studios in Burbank (or was it Glendale?) still around or have all ABC productions been shifted over to Disney's lot? When I visited LA in 2001 and 2002, the map I had showed a listing for the ABC TV Center, but I don't know how current that was.
Click to expand...
The ABC Television Center on Prospect Ave. (where KABC was also based until 2000 when they moved to Glendale) is now The Prospect Studios. Besides "General Hospital", "Grey's Anatomy", its upcoming spinoff, and "The Shield" also film there as well.
Click to expand...
...and The Prospect Studios are in Los Feliz, not Glendale or Burbank...
 
I've never been inside either place, but I did once drive past them on a vacation in Los Angeles back in 2000 with my then-girlfriend (who lived in the Los Angeles area for a time before she met me), and she was happy that KTLA's iconic "5" was still on their studio-to-transmitter link tower at their Sunset Boulevard studios.

She pointed out that working in the building was Stan Chambers, a news anchor/commentator, who she referred to as "The Walter Cronkite of Southern California". Chambers retired a year or so back.
 
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