A Sad Day At Boston’s WGBH
On December 14, 2014
- TV History
Picture Parade 3…A Sad Day At Boston’s WGBH
October 14, 1961, a fire started in Studio A and it was a complete loss. In the center of the photo are a couple of RCA TK11/31s and amazingly the TVP pedestal’s compressed air tank did not blow up. This was a Friday, but they were back on the air by Monday. Local broadcasters helped with studio space and equipment. -Bobby Ellerbee
It needs to be said, the best engineers and camera operators worked at WGBH over the years. Shout outs also to Chuck Costa, Mark Helman, Chas Norton, Steve Colby, Dan Jones. I could go on.
A few years later, I picked them up by E-skip when my local channel two was off the air.
I hate to say it, but after a fire you can wind up with a much more modern and better facility.
I worked with two of the engineers who were there at the time – Jerry Adler and Bill Fairweather. Bill told me that concerned viewers even gave donations of clothing to GBH staffers! The viewers thought they lived at the studios!
Still a juggernaut, WGBH. Fire or no.
As a kid I would stumble on thier mostly monochrome broadcasts long after most of the market went to color. I never stayed on the channel very long as the programming certainly wasn’t targeting the younger audience.
Continuing previous post — :Peter covered the fire story while working for WHDH (the original on Ch. 5) news. The commercial broadcasters pitched in for days afterward with mobile units and studio space to get and keep the station back on the air. Longer term solution came when Boston Archdiocese offered use of its television facility on Bay State Road in Boston’s Back Bay. They had a studio with RCA cameras used to produce religious programs such as mass telecasts. Then working for WHDH, Peter helped WGBH prople set up film chain, etc.
My husband Peter worked there while in college (Boston Univ.). Studios (2 t-v, telecine/videotape, offices and radio) were on Massachusetts Avenue, in what had been an upstairs skating rink above ground floor retail. Origin of fire was unclear. A staff member who was credited with saving numerous videotapes of locally produced programming by throwing them into parking lot had reportedly been working in the building prior to fire bweing discovered. breaking oyut
This was the WGBH studio when it was located in Cambridge, very close to the MIT campus. After the fiire, they moved across the Charles River to the Allston section of Boston (02134), the neighborhood that was already home to WBZ.