Thanks to our good friend Gady Reinhold at the CBS Broadcast Center, here is one of the many treasures from his personal archives…a real script from The Howdy Doody Show,  Notice on the first page, C-K in the top right, which denotes a Chroma Key shot, with actors dressed in all blue, for the “invisible effect”. Enjoy this rare look at a script from the iconic children’s program.

Here is the 32 page book on how NBC’s headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza was built. In this rare, 1935 look at the construction and operation of NBC’s new Radio City facilities, you’ll see all the fascinating technical details, photographs and diagrams your heart could desire.

NBC broadcast schedules from 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1958. This is the best ever guide to see which studios were being used at a time when radio and TV were sharing space at 30 Rock, and looking for studio space around the city.

Here are some keys to the Abbreviations here, so you can better understand what is going on. First, the -L is for Local and -N is for Network. Studios A, B, C were live studios at NBC’s Uptown Studios at 106 Street and F was the film projection studio there. 3H, 3A, 3B, 6A, 6B, 8G and 8H are at 30 Rock. Intl = The international Theater, Cen = The Center Theater, Hud = The Hudson Theater. CHI means the show is being done at NBC in Chicago, same for Wash = Washington D.C. and PHIL = a feed from Philadelphia. Notice “Camel News Caravan”, and some others are (C & F) which means the show is live with some film inserts.

NBC heralds the first anniversary of being a full-color network, which occurred November 7, 1966.

RCA and NBC outline their early achievements in television. Notice that May 7, 1935 was the day that NBC Studio 3H at Rockefeller Plaza began it’s million dollar conversion to RCA Experimental Television Studio 3H. Read on…there is more treasure here for history buffs.

CBS looks back on 20 years of television innovation in this 18 page review from July 1951…smack dab in the middle of the Color War with RCA/NBC.

NBC’s announcement that the RCA Building’s largest studio would be making the switch to a new medium. This August 11, 1950 memo also mentions that Studios 3A and 3B will have finished conversion by Labor Day of 1950.

NBC takes a look at the many big advances it made in 1948, like increasing the size of the TV network from 4 to 25 stations, introducing Kinescopes and much more.

Press releases and news articles about the construction and expansion of CBS Television City.

A fascinating 27 page report on the CBS color facility in New York, Studio 72, from May of 1955.

A look at how NBC’s radio studios at 711 Fifth Avenue were designed and constructed. Before the move to 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1933, NBC’s called 711 Fifth Avenue home for five years, although they had custom built this location only 5 years before. While still crowded into their first office and studio location at WEAF, in the AT&T Building on 19th Street, they were making big plans, and here they are.

A 1942 RCA Review look at the design and construction of NBC’s brand new, twin sixth-floor studios at Radio City. Built for radio, but planned with an eye on the future of television.

A 1949 NBC press release notes the first transmission of a West Coast kinescope to the East Coast.

A 1949 press release notes the debut of NBC’s Los Angeles station.

A rare document looks at the earliest days of the station that NBC bought from AT&T, which we now know WNBC. It was the flagship station in New York, on which the NBC Red Network was based, and later, the NBC Radio Network.

As NBC continued to refine its efforts toward commercial broadcasting’s debut, here’s what its staff had distilled on the subject of studio technique. This was written by NBC’s first studio cameraman, Albert Protzman, and this gives us a first hand account of the lessons learned in NBC Studio 3H, the first home of electronic television.

From none other than Vladimir Zworykin, and R. E. Shelby, here is an engineer’s dream come true…a full report on the state of television in 1940. BUT…at the start is a very interesting historical look back on how they got there, which highlights things that Dr. Zworykin believes to be milestones…including the work or Filo T. Farnsworht!  Glad he gave credit, where credit is due.