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Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

P

Prais

Who around the country (not necessarily in Chicago) has good looking "storefront radio studios?

On Bradley Place the 3 WGN radio studios were built on the second floor and PACKED with stuff. Wally's studio had a (seldom used) piano in it for many years, and Franklyn MacCormacks overnight studio had a carpet and lamps, resembling a living room.

Not only does the present arrangement give "free publicity" (Michigan Ave after all) but the place is MUCH less claustrophobic.

Curious......
On Bradley Pl., what presently occupies the spot where the radio studios were (across from the old tv projection room)?

According to the internet, the weather office (new construction) is "on the East side of the building" (the Campbell ave. side...correct?).

Also, what is in the "newer building" on the Addison St. side?
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

I've heard that WCRN (AM) in Worcester MA 830 kHz 50 kW-U DA-2 about 40 miles west of Boston just recently completed relocation to storefront studios in Worcester, a city with a chronically troubled downtown. WCRN is locally owned and, despite dynamite technical facilities, is very much a struggling station. The format is syndicated talk, a small amount of which originates locally.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

Prais said:
Curious......
On Bradley Pl., what presently occupies the spot where the radio studios were (across from the old tv projection room)?

According to the internet, the weather office (new construction) is "on the East side of the building" (the Campbell ave. side...correct?).

Also, what is in the "newer building" on the Addison St. side?
Click to expand...

When I toured Bradley Place a couple of years ago, the old radio studios were being used as TV edit suites for the production department. The old studio windows and even a few of the clocks were still there.

The weather office that I saw in 2008 was on the south side of the main first-floor hallway, right across the hall from the big TV studios. The newer construction on the east side (Campbell Ave.) was home to the TV newsroom on the first floor. I think CLTV has now been moved in there as well.

There was a smallish new building on the southwest corner of the complex that was home to the satellite uplinks for WGN America.

As for other stations with notable storefront studios, they're big in Chicago - WLS-TV and WBBM-TV both have downtown storefront studios. So does WCCO-TV in Minneapolis. Storefront radio is less common, at least in big markets - in some small towns, it's still not uncommon to see the radio station right in the front of a Main Street storefront. (The Route 81 stations in Corning, NY come to mind here, and WEBO 1330 just down the road in Owego.)

Right here in Rochester, Entercom's cluster has most of its stations in first-floor windowed studios, too. They're not quite "storefront," being somewhat elevated above street level, but you can see the jocks on the air when you drive by (as I do often on my way to WXXI across the street!)
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

Scott, I ENJOY your "tours" on your website. Thanks.

Scott said; When I toured Bradley Place a couple of years ago, the old radio studios were being used as TV edit suites for the production department. The old studio windows and even a few of the clocks were still there.

The weather office that I saw in 2008 was on the south side of the main first-floor hallway, right across the hall from the big TV studios. The newer construction on the east side (Campbell Ave.) was home to the TV newsroom on the first floor. I think CLTV has now been moved in there as well.
____________________

Wow - thanks Scott. I'm thinking I was last there in the mid 1970's. I attended Gordon Tech High School, just about 3 blocks West of WGN, and often visited Wally Phillips at the radil station on the second floor.

I'm remembering the South side of the main floor TV hallway - across from "the 3 big studios."

The old design was the dining room (with the west facing window) is farthest WEST, then the prop and set storage - including the studio with the large turntable to revolve cars - where they videotaped car commercials every Thursday (Behrends Lincoln Mercury and others w/ Randy Blake).

Time marches on!
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

107.1 FM WPGU in Champaign, IL
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

...when I worked for WMCW/1600 in Harvard in 2000-01, we had a huge picture window on the control studio that looked out onto an alleyway and, since there was a small and usually vacant parking space on the triangulated corner of the block across the street, by extension onto North Division Street/Highway 14. Technically, the station's front door was on Johnson Street, but that rear window was for all practical purposes a "storefront" situation. I half expected someone who didn't like my playing an Amos 'n' Andy episode on my Sunday afternoon old-time radio show to try the same stunt WGN suffered last week ;-) ...
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

WMAQ-TV was the first station in Chicago to have street front studios. It was modeled (if I'm not mistaken) after The Today Show, which has had street front studios for years. WLS-TV I believe was next, and now WBBM-TV having street front studios. Last I remember, WFLD's studios were in the Prudential building below street level. The street that the Prudential Building (original Prudential building) isn't that busy of a street as Michigan Avenue is. WGN-TV is too far from downtown Chicago to even have street front studios, but not impossible. Both WFLD & WGN-TV don't need to have street front studios to have successful newscasts. They do well without them. Street front studios can sometimes be distractions to the news anchors if there are people who show no respect for their jobs.

As for how much of the newscasts are done in the street front studios vs the regular news studios: I believe WLS-TV does nearly all of their news from the street front studios, but last night, I saw the news from their old studios. WMAQ-TV, if I'm not mistaken, doesn't do the 10pm news from street front studios, but all other news is from the street front studios. I don't know about WBBM-TV.

My local PBS station, WYIN-DT won't be doing their news from street front studios anytime soon. For one, their studios are in an industrial complex in Merrillville Indiana. And two, even if they can find another location, their news isn't likely to be done in street front studios, due to cost. The local news is low budget, one newscast a day, and only Monday - Friday. The closest they could get to get to street front studios is setup in a shopping center, as downtown Gary, East Chicago, & Hammond are practically dead (though Hammond is redoing their downtown area, and looks nothing like oldtime downtown in general), and nearby Crown Point has no location big enough in their downtown to support WYIN's facilities.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

What's the matter w/the Soutlake Mall in Merrillville???
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

Prais said:
What's the matter w/the Soutlake Mall in Merrillville???
Click to expand...

I don't believe WYIN-DT could afford to operate at Southlake Mall. Even if they can, I doubt the owners of the mall would allow it at this time, since the mall is doing well. The mall would have to be desperate for tenants if they weren't doing well. Not only that, they (WYIN-DT) would need an exterior entrance/exit for the studios. The mall has hours of 10am - 8 or 8:30pm Monday - Saturday & Sunday 11am - 6pm (hours were cut, due to the economy) wouldn't work out for the TV station. I don't know how many hours they have staff at the TV station, but they now operate 24 hours a day, and could pose a problem with mall owners. At least Lake County Indiana isn't like many Cook County Illinois communities, where a local sales tax is added on top of state & county, and can keep certain businesses out of shopping districts. If Lake County were like that, WYIN couldn't locate at the mall, since whatever space they would need would take away from a business that generates sales, and brings in sales tax. Besides. it might take a variance in the ordinance to allow a certain business to move into an area that isn't zoned for their business. I believe that for now, they're staying right where they're at, though they did mention years ago, that they need bigger facilities.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

When I was in Fargo, ND, last year, WZFN 1100 AM opened a big new storefront studio.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

WWHN AM1510 is run out of strip mall just south of 103rd and Halsted in Chicago. I am not sure if they broadcast
from that location all the time, or how visible the host is from the street. I know they also broadcast from their
transmitter site on Adela St. in Joliet, you can see their tower on I 80 near Briggs St, on the north side of the
expressway.

I think they broadcast from Joliet when they sign on and off, to turn the transmitter on and off, as it is done by
hand. They are a low budget operation, and I'm not sure how much control they have of the transmitter from the Chicago
location. They only have two or three on air personality's, one of whom is Mr. Hawkins, who owns the station.

I was actually surprised to see that they had a website for the station, I had never seen it before. The funny thing on
the website is that they say you can listen in Champain and Bloomington, I have never tried to listen to them in either
town, but I find it hard to believe because their signal is pretty weak on the southside, where the main studio is located.
The coverage map on their page seems to be a little bit of a stretch ;-).

www.wwhn1510am.com/index.html
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

In the 70's & sometime up until the 80s WGCL in Cleveland used to have a sidewalk window where you could walk right up and stick notes on it asking for a request. It was right across from the Greyhound bus station and you got to see all sorts of weirdos hanging around that place and getting off the bus. In Akron, the station I worked at had a window that looked out into the main lobby and on warm spring days they left the door open for air so anybody walking buy could stop and stare at us. One of the DJs got fed up and put curtains up but managment made him keep them open. Soon as they went out of the building he would yank those suckers closed.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

WFAY 1230 Fayetteville NC/WFBX 1450 Spring Lake NC has storefront studios in downtown Fayetteville. They are ESPN 22.5 hours a day, and have some tvs in there showing ESPN shows the rest of the time. It's in the front of an entertainment complex they opened up about a year ago in a former department store.

About 10 years ago, a station moved to a storefront in Greensboro's Four Seasons Mall. I think it was WKEW 1400 which was doing some local talk shows at the time, and it seems like 1320 WCOG Radio Disney was in there too, but no local programming. That one lasted about a year or two.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

The old WDXN in Clarksville, TN, had a "storefront" studio facing West Dunbar Cave Road at the time I was working there. The on-air announcer stood at the board facing the large plate glass front window. If you walked in from the parking lot just in front of the building, you would see the announcer and the studio on your right as you walked in. At night, we had to turn off the overhead lights and turn on the softer lights because we felt like we were so "on display" due to there not being any curtains on that large front window. (We were told that we could park directly in front of that window, so as to be less "visible," but that space eventually became a handicap parking space, although I later found out that that didn't apply to the "off" hours.) Dunbar Cave Road is a side street there (and near the industrial park in that particular area) but the main highway was less than a block away and within easy view, although travelers on the highway probably couldn't have seen us from that far away.

It was not a problem at the time I was working there (summer months), but since that window faced sort of south-southwest, I could not imagine how announcers could have tolerated being in that studio during the winter months, due to almost direct sunlight coming into that studio. But it could not have been a problem for them for very long, since they weren't in that studio for more than a year or so.
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

...when I did the morning drive shift there WRJQ/1570 (now WSCO) Appleton WI had its studios and offices in the Valley Fair Shopping Center. However, the studios did not have windows looking out into the mall...
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

Back in the eighties, WAYV in Atlantic City had a storefront studio right on the boardwalk...
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

WMMB-AM 1240 in Melbourne, FL operates from studios in a shopping mall. They have one studio which is viewable as you walk through, and the morning show originates from there (the rest of the day is syndicated stuff.)
 
Re: Who around the USA (not necessarily in Chicago) has "storefront studios?"

The Emmis cluster in Indianapolis has a nice street-side studio on the huge pedestrian mall building location. The other studios are upstairs but they built an extra identical studio on the street so if any of the jocks wanted to broadcast from the street location they could. Last time I was there 93.1 was still CHR WNOU (before they blew it up to move WIBC over to FM) and the afternoon jock that I had come in to videotape decided to do his show from the streetside studio so I saw that for the first time...As you walk toward the entrance of the building the studio is on the right. I never payed any attention as to where WIBC's facilities were at that time. If not upstairs with the FMs, they may have also been streetside but on the left side of the entrance..

Back in the 90's WKKX in St. Louis had their studio mall-side on the West side of St. Louis. People could press their faces up against the glass from outside to view at least the morning show Steve & D.C. at that time).

A really old mall-front location going back to the late 60's-early 70's was KSON-AM San Diego with studio on a lower outside level of the College Grove Shopping Center mall. There was an escalator pretty close to the studio window going up to the next floor and you could also see the KSON studio from there (but also walk right up to it). I believe that the board faced away from the window though so you mostly saw the back of the DJ on air.

And an early "pool side" studio location was KFXM San Bernardino CA with studio located beside the swimming pool at the San Bernardino Holiday Inn. It looked like a wing of the Holiday Inn (KFXM KDUO location) and was supposedly built & maintained by the hotel in exchange for free land, or discounted land, since the station owner owned the land that it was all built on too (KFXM towers out back on the golf course land that he also owned). The poolside location was a better view for the DJs since the pool was full of good looking women in the summer months. There was an intercom out to the pool area when it was first built in the mid 60's but no longer worked in the mid 70's. View was still good at that time though.
 
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