CBS, NBC First West Coast Homes (With Video)
CBS, NBC First West Coast Homes (With Video)
Before there was Television City and NBC Color City, there was CBS Columbia Square and NBC Radio City West. Both were originally built for radio and about a third of their radio shows came from Hollywood.
Columbia Square opened in April 1938 and television came there in 1948. The first network television show to originate from the west coast was ‘The Ed Wynn Show’ which came from Studio A…the same stage that would later be used to kinescope the pilot of ‘I Love Lucy’.
At the link is the Saturday, March 25, 1950 broadcast of ‘The Ed Wynn Show’, (a/k/a Camel Comedy Caravan) with The Three Stooges. The show was done live on the west coast at 9 PM and shown on the east coast, the next Saturday as 9 Eastern via kinescope.
Television came to NBC’s Radio City West in January of 1949 when KNBH was launched. NBC’s Hollywood studios opened in 1938 and served as a replacement for NBC’s radio broadcast center in San Francisco, which had been around since the network’s formation in 1927. Since NBC didn’t own a radio station in Los Angeles, the network’s West Coast programming originated from its San Francisco station (KPO-AM, which later became KNBC-AM, and is now KNBR).
Stu Rosen…fellow CSULB Radio/tv alum, a couple of years ahead of me
Judging by these photos CBS was first in color 🙂
My dearest friend Jack Langdon who would eventually work for George Burns for 36 years, started at CBS on Sunset in the typing department in little “Cabins” behind the main building. Jack said, they would sit at their typewriters typing scripts (with carbon paper between the pages) scripts for The Jack Benny Show, Red Skelton, Burns & Allen etc. It was one of the greatest working experiences of Jack’s life…He met his long time partner Tommy Clapp there as well. Tommy would go on to work for George first until 1958 when Jack took over. (This is Jack and I at his house in Hollywood) I Love him and miss him.
When I was still a kid back in the early 1970’s, I got to know Stu Rosen, who was the producer and host of a local L.A. television show called “Dusty’s Treehouse” (he was one of my mother’s banking clients). Knowing that I was interested in television production, Stu would sometimes take me along to the show tapings at Columbia Square. Exploring the corridors of what served at the time as the broadcasting home of KNXT (now KCBS-TV), KNX Newsradio, and KNX-FM, the original art deco interior (including porthole windows in the studio doors) had all been retained. I also remember that audience seating dating back to the 1930s still remained in the studio where “Dusty’s Treehouse” was taped (there was no audience for this show). I could tell that the KNXT newsroom was in what was originally a cavernous auditorium / theatre (probably the one where Jack Benny had once broadcast his radio show from). Today, Stu is now a professor at California State University, Long Beach.