Inside NBC…Like Few Have Ever Seen It!

Yesterday, from 10:30 till 3:30, I had the tour of a lifetime! My NBC tour guides were two men that have forgotten more NBC history than most ever knew. Dennis Degan and Joel Spector lead the way as Gady Reinhold, Ron Simon and I looked and listened.

Dennis of course is a long time video editor for ‘Today’ and Joel started with NBC in 1965 as an audio engineer. His boyhood friend, Gady, started at CBS in 1966. When Joel retired a few years ago he was on SNL, but like many, he still comes back for more and does fill in, usually on ‘The Nightly News’ and was actually on standby yesterday for that show.

Like all good television people, we started at the bottom and worked our way up…from the second floor to the ninth. On the second floor is the BOC, or Broadcast Operations Center. It seems that Joel and Dennis know everybody, but I was pleasantly surprised to find our friend Alan Coffield at work there.

Let me pull over to the side of the road for a moment and tell you that there was just way too much seen to go into here and now. When I get home, I’ll cover the tour in more detail but for now, I’m just sharing some highlights.

Today, I will spare you the photo of me kissing the floor in television’s first studio…3H. If you remember 3H, became 3K in 1955 when G and F were combined and color was added. This space is still 3K and is now used as a second studio for MSNBC.

3B is home to NBC’s Nightly News and is where the Brian Williams broadcast originates and to his credit, at Brian’s request, there are no robotics in 3B…real live cameramen are used on the show. There are three pedestal cameras there with a Melin camera and a job camera. WNBC news is in 3C and MSNBC’s main studio is in the expanded 3A space.

Although Gady is a CBS man, he knows NBC inside and out. I mention this because I want to tell you that yesterday, I was drinking from three firehoses…not just one! Some of what I saw yesterday escapes me, but with their help and the pictures, I’ll reconstruct much of this in detail later.

The thing I remember most about the fourth floor was 4G and J. Back in the 50s, radio studio 3G had it’s height cut in half so that a
television film chain room could be built above it.

Remember, even as radio studios in 1933, these were all two stories tall and had upper windows for the observation decks on the floors above. This was the same for studios on 6 and 8 as well.

As you can imagine, over the years the interiors have changed over and over, but the history is still there and Dennis and Joel know where it was. On the fifth floor, we stood in the space once occupied by 5HN where Frank McGee and Chet Huntley gave the first NBC television reports of President Kennedy’s assassination. That floor is now news ingest, satellite news ingest, video editing and video playback for the NBC news shows. This is where Dennis works.

On the sixth floor, the ‘Tonight’ studio floor in 6B had just been repainted so we didn’t go in, but I got a good look at that Tuesday. 6A is idle now awaiting a redo for Meredith Viera’s show later this year. On the seventh floor, there is a lot new construction going on as several new control rooms are being added.

On the eighth floor, we took a look into the newly remodeled 8G which is now home of the Seth Meyers show and I’ll be in there again today to meet Mike Knarre and the Late Show crew. I was there Wednesday but they were in meetings and then straight into the show taping.

Of course 8H is there, the largest of all with 10,000 square feet of space. Seeing it quite, you can appreciate the size more. The control rooms are on the eight floor too. There is much more to come, but for now, I have to get ready for today.

I’m at NBC this morning for a couple of meetings and at noon, I’m going back the The Ed Sullivan Theater to meet Rich Schekman and Letterman director Jerry Foley. I hope to watch the guest band rehearsal there too. This afternoon, I’m visiting Steven Colblet’s studio and after that, attending the taping of ‘The Daily Show With John Stewart’, just down the street. More later! Bobby Ellerbee

P.S. The shots of us inside were taken on the spot were NBC’s always ready, breaking news studio was located. That was studio 5H and was later named 5HN. That is where NBC broke the first Kennedy news in 1963.

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