Radio City, New York
Prior to occupying its location at Rockefeller Center, NBC had occupied upper floors of a building at 711 Fifth Avenue developed by Floyd Brown, himself an architect. Home of NBC from its construction in 1927, the broadcast company occupied floor designed by Raymond Hood — who designed the tenant's multiple studios as "a Gothic church, the Roman forum, a Louis XIV room and, in a space devoted to jazz, something "wildly futuristic, with plenty of color in bizarre designs." NBC outgrew 711 Fifth Avenue in 1933.
The Radio City name was first given to the NBC radio facilities located the in RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center. NBC's studios have occupied most of the lower floors of the building (now called the GE Building) since 1933. The Radio City name also inspired the name for Radio City Music Hall, the movie and concert venue located in another building just northwest of the GE Building in Rockefeller Center. The original radio studio suites were eventually converted to TV use.
The largest and most prominent NBC studio at Radio City is Studio 8-H. 8-H was designed for the live radio concerts of the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini and opened in 1937. In 1950 it was converted into a television studio and since 1975 it has been the home of NBC's live comedy program Saturday Night Live (SNL).
While NBC has divested itself of its company-owned radio holdings, television shows like SNL and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (taped in Studio 6-B) continue to bear the Radio City label. Among other production suites in the New York Radio City Studios are Studio 3-C, housing NBC Nightly News, Studio 3-B, housing Dateline NBC; and Studio 3-K (NBC Sports).
The Radio City studio from which The Tonight Show was broadcast during the Jack Paar and early Johnny Carson years (it first originated at the Hudson Theatre, on 44th Street) — Studio 6-B — later served as WNBC's main news studio until November 2008, when it was converted into the home for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. News 4 New York then moved to Studio 7-E.
NBC has conducted tours of its Radio City studios in Rockefeller Center since 1933. Among the young pages who've helped the NBC-tour customers and studio-audience members at the Radio City Studios before going on to media success have been original Today Show host Dave Garroway and longtime Today personality Willard Scott; original Tonight Show creator/host Steve Allen and his announcer/sidekick Gene Rayburn; broadcast journalist Ted Koppel; TV host Regis Philbin; TV producer Marcy Carsey; actress Kate Jackson; and movie/broadcasting mogul Michael Eisner.
Read more about this topic: NBC Radio City Studios
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