April 10, 1985…Inside CBS News Studio 33 With Dan Rather
This is a rare look inside CBS Studio 33, or what many call The Cronkite Newsroom. Although Dan Rather was now the anchor, Studio 33 is where Walter Cronkite first reported from, when they moved to the Broadcast Center in 1964.
Prior to the move, the newsroom and set was on the 23rd floor of the Graybar Building which was next to Grand Central, and the show was switched out of the old Studio 42. For the home viewer, it could have been a little hard to tell as the 33 set and the Graybar set were very similar. Even the studio buildout of the new 33 had the same layout including the famous fishbowl office.
About a year after this video, the news moved to Studio 47. Today, Studio 33 is occupied by CBS Radio and across the hall in the space once occupied by the 33 control room, you will find the “60 Minutes” set.
The black man floor managing the show in the studio is CBS News veteran James Wall. Interestingly, his counterpart at NBC News was another black man, Fred Lights who started with Dave Garroway on “Today” and floor managed NBC’s news shows from Huntley-Brinkley to Tom Brokaw.
The cameras here are Hitachi SK 110s and show us how frantic the pace is just before and during air. Stuffing a day of the world’s news into 22 minutes is not an easy task, and back then, the real news took up most of the time…not just the first two segments like now. -Bobby Ellerbee
Studio numbers may have been reused at 57th Street as a heritage to the GCT days.
Re; CBS Broadcast Center. It is said that CBS named (or more accurately numbered its studios, based on the order from which they were purchased. Grand Central Station already had Studios 41, 42, 43, 44. Why did they used the same numbers when they moved from Grand Centrall to the Broadcast Center?
John: Murrow didn’t receive very good treatment at the end either. This isn’t shown in the George Clooney movie but is depicted in “Murrow” (1986) starring Daniel J. Travanti, with Edward Herrmann as Fred Friendly and Dabney Coleman as Bill Paley. This movie also covers Murrow in London, in the executive suite and at the end of his career (and life). Strongly recommended.
CBS Network or local? CBS local is on Hudson Street near the Holland tunnel entrance . . .
The network operation is still in the old Cronkite newsroom at the Broadcast Center. CBS Radio News is part of the News division, not the Radio division. Pretty soon they’ll be completely separate as Entercom buys CBS Radio.
CBS local TV is still in the CBS Broadcast Center on W 57th. The same building as the network.
I was asking about radio, not TV. CBS radio (WCBS, WCBS-FM, and a bunch of other local stations) are in an office building downtown. They call it ‘Hudson Square’.
M. Scott Cole I read recently that WCBS-TV is (temporarily??) moving out of Studio 46 for a rebuild. Channel 2 News has used 46 since Bob Trout anchored local as well as serving as a network correspondent.
What is Studio 47 (The Fish Bowl) being used for, now that the Evening News had moved into 57?
And this is the same Control Room 33 that Evening News originated from for over 2 decades. It’s on it’s 3rd rebuild, first rebuild was in the early 90s as a hybrid Control and CMX Edit Room for 60 Minutes. In 2008 it was upgraded to HD.
This is my current workplace where I drive the Sony switcher, EVS video server, and Avid Media Composer. Also buried in there is Sony’s linear tape editor and so much more.
I worked in a truck where the switcher was on left side as in this pix……..It was so difficult to get used to it. My head kept turning left to see PGM/PST. LOL……all I saw was a wall !!!! I moved “BLK” to the right side which I always do anyway and then from the right side I went C-1, C-2, C-3 etc moving left.
With the CBS evening news with Scott Pelley moving in with the CBS morning show, what control room is switching that, and what’s happened to the set and space where the evening news used to originate until just a few months ago?
Both shows originate out of Studio 57 and Control Room 47.
The small part of the Cronkite/Rather Evening News Studio 33 that was carved out for a blue screen insert stage as the home of 60 Minutes. Notice the jib camera that is used for the creation of and live tracking of the 3D virtual world in which our magazine or book pages live in.
CBS News has a great tradition steeped in Murrow, and an ugly tradition of being unkind to some of their other legacies … Cronkite became persona non grata in the Rather years, now Rather is today. Whereas NBC News treats Brokaw like he’s on their Mount Rushmore.
Rather at his age has made some nimble shifts and his coverage of Trump here on FB is among his greatest work.
Russ: 1010 WINS and Newsradio880 have moved downtown. Network news is still in the cow barn.
In the pre-show chaos, Rather asks that a factoid about the percentage of the textile industry’s share of the U.S. economy, be verified. The go-to person for that was John Mosedale. Here’s more about him … http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/john-mosedale-former-cbs-evening-news-writer-passes-away/26180
I believe CBS radio has moved downtown near the tip of Manhattan.
I never missed an episode of cbs News here in France it was programmed every day at 7am. On channel + I discovered the life of American a very great pros Dan Rather