This is the Green Brothers Novelty Band inside NBC’s Studio B at 711 Fifth Avenue. The date is 1928, and although there are other photos of the network’s first radio studios, they are all dated 1929, so this could be the first inside look.
Included here is a New York Times article about NBC’s first home and some interesting history from the late 1920s till now. In the drawing below, we see the studios that occupied the top few floors of the building.
MICKEY MOUSE has left the building. That is, left the marquee over the World of Disney Store on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, where he, Minnie and Pluto guarded the entrance for well over a decade. They were removed earlier this year, after Disney moved out.
What’s left is a big, conservative limestone office block built in 1927, home until 1933 to the radically modern headquarters of NBC.
The developer Floyd Brown began work on the 15-story office building, at first called 711 Fifth Avenue, in mid-1926. At the end of the year Mr. Brown announced that the new National Broadcasting Company would be leasing the upper floors for its offices and broadcast studios. By that time the exterior design must have been set, and so it must reflect Mr. Brown’s tastes.
An architect, he founded the Bethlehem Engineering Company in 1918 to develop and design structures; only Bethlehem’s name appears on the NBC drawings.
The marquee that used to adorn the World of Disney Store on Fifth Avenue at 55th Street, where Mickey, Minnie and Pluto stood guard for well over a decade. They were removed earlier this year, after Disney moved out.Credit…Daniel Acker/Bloomberg
Even on Fifth Avenue, a full limestone facade is sumptuous for a commercial structure, and Mr. Brown gave it a double-height second floor designed for a bank tenant, with a giant colonnade on both street elevations. Above that his building is not much to look at, just window punch-outs and a few setback floors with some detailing.
The pseudonymous critic T-Square, writing about the building in 1927 in The New Yorker, commented that “No matter what the modernists say — or do — there is no getting away from the fact that a Corinthian column is a swell thing.” However, he did note that the essence of the new structure was “economy and simplicity.”
For the design of its offices, NBC, established only in 1926, retained the provocative urban theorist Raymond Hood. He told The New York Times in April 1927 that he was unhappy with the drabness of typical recording studios, and certain that such surroundings affected performers negatively.
Thus, The Times reported, he was designing the various studios as a Gothic church, the Roman forum, a Louis XIV room and, in a space devoted to jazz, something “wildly futuristic, with plenty of color in bizarre designs.”
The main studio at NBC’s headquarters. The lighting was designed to be dramatic and copious.Credit…Office for Metropolitan History
However, photos of the finished interiors show uniformly modernist designs, although tempered by traditional motifs. For instance, a sinuous strip of Art Deco wall painting is based on the Vitruvian wave, a pattern dating back to the classical period. Some peculiar bundled light fixtures are topped by anthemion leaves, another classical allusion.
The lighting was dramatic and copious; in 1928 The Architectural Record quoted Mr. Hood as explaining that it did the work of an audience, helping to keep a performer alone in a studio “keyed up to a high pitch.”
The broadcast studio was a new problem in architectural design, and rooms had to be soundproofed in ways hitherto not considered. There were separate air ducts for each studio, with interior baffles and special flooring. The broadcast facilities in NBC’s building were the most advanced in the country.
The broadcast network, too, was a new idea. The established pattern was for local stations to generate their own programming, all live. Thus, New York-area show listings in The Times on Armistice Day 1927 included the dedication of the Canadian monument at Arlington National Cemetery on WEAF (one of two NBC stations), French lessons by V. Harrison-Berlitz on WNYC, farm market reports on WJZ (the other NBC station), “The Smiling Baritone” on WOR, and the Beaux-Arts Orchestra on WABC. Somehow the radio industry was able to function without vulgar language and incendiary political insult.
An orchestra plays in 1929 in an ornate studio at the headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company.Credit…Office for Metropolitan History
The development of NBC and other networks promised economies of scale. There was no reason that WGY in Schenectady had to pay the local Van Curler Orchestra if it could just take an NBC feed. In such a calculation, Van Curler became just another fungible content provider.
At first, major artists resisted appearing on the radio, believing that their concert fees would be reduced or that their voices would be presented in an unflattering way. In 1928 after an initial radio appearance, the pianist Ignace Paderewski announced that he would never play for broadcast, according to The Times.
But in the same year the soprano Amelita Galli-Curci changed her mind and performed on NBC. In 1929 the band leader John Philip Sousa also reversed his position and broadcast from the NBC building. His decision was perhaps influenced by his fee, in excess of $50,000; NBC said it spent over $5 million on talent in 1928.
In 1933, having outgrown 711 Fifth Avenue, NBC moved to Rockefeller Center, sometimes called Radio City at the time. After that, its old home was repeatedly altered. Patricia Maes, a vice president of Jones Lang LaSalle, the managing agent, says only scraps are left of Mr. Hood’s remarkable design.
Disney opened on the ground floor in 1996 and installed the bronze-toned sculptures over the Fifth Avenue entrance. But now they are gone and the space is for rent. Zoraya Suarez, a spokeswoman for Walt Disney World, says mice and dog are bound for Florida — snowbirds like so many New Yorkers.
Correction:
A headline last Sunday with the Streetscapes column about 711 Fifth Avenue, a building that over time has housed NBC and the World of Disney store, erroneously included a reference to NBC’s peacock logo. The logo was created in 1956, 23 years after NBC left the building, in 1933; therefore the Fifth Avenue building was not “where the peacock nested.”
After only a few years here, RCA and NBC began the process of designing the space they would move into at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1933. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
FANTASTIC! Johnny Carson Punks Joan Rivers! RARE MUST SEE VIDEO!
I had never seen this till just this morning and bet that you never have either. This is one of the most elaborate practical jokes ever and you’ll love the very end too! Thanks to John Marelli for sending this along. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Johnny Carson plays an elaborate practical joke on Joan Rivers (about 1983). Because of her many jokes about the British Royal Family, Johnny Carson hires Br…
As you watch Gene Rayburn cut promos for ‘The Match Game’ at WBZ in Boston, you’ll see him transform into his “hosting personality” right before your very eyes. This is fun! Thanks to Kevin Vahey for the clip. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
These are excerpts from a promo record session that Gene Rayburn taped at WBZ TV-4 in Boston in the spring of 1982. The spots highlight the station’s afterno…
How Television Goes From Coast To Coast…The 1949 Version
Before I get too far along, I wanted to mention that at the start of this, and again, scattered throughout, we get a rare look inside at what I think is NBC Studio 8G in action. This would have been shot not long after 8G was dedicated on April 22, 1948.
In today’s post just before this one, we celebrated America’s first coast to coast television broadcast of September 4, 1951. When this AT&T film was made in 1949, the network lines only went as far west as Chicago but in early 1950 went to St. Louis.
This is full of very interesting information on the coaxial cables and systems of the day and at around the 6 minute mark, we get into how AT&T handled the microwave part of broadcasting.
Many of today’s younger generation of broadcasters do not know that back in the early days, Ma Bell was in charge of long distance transmissions for both radio and television. They were as much a part of engineering and remote crews as the camera and audio men, because without the hookup, there was no show. Enjoy and share!
– Bobby Ellerbee
September 4, 1951…America’s First Coast To Coast TV Broadcast
63 years ago yesterday, the first live television signals were transmitted from San Francisco to the east coast. On that day in 1951, President Harry S. Truman’s opening speech before the Japanese Peace Conference was broadcast across the nation, marking the first time a television program was broadcast from coast to coast. The speech focused on Truman’s acceptance of a treaty that officially ended America’s post-World War II occupation of Japan.
The broadcast, via then-state-of-the-art microwave technology, was picked up by 87 stations in 47 cities. In his remarks, Truman lauded the treaty as one that would help “build a world in which the children of all nations can live together in peace.” As communism was threatening to spread throughout Pacific Rim nations such as Korea and Vietnam, the U.S. recognized the need to create an ally in a strong, democratic Japan.
Since the end of World War II in 1945, Japan had been occupied and closely monitored by the American military under the leadership of General Douglas MacArthur. By 1951, six years later, Truman considered the task of rebuilding Japan complete. Truman praised the Japanese people’s willingness to go along with the plan and expressed his pride in having helped to rebuild Japan as a democracy. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
ULTRA RARE! Joan Rivers Debuts Her Own Show…September 1968
Until yesterday, Joan Rivers was a pioneer in every way and we will miss her! 46 years ago this month, ‘That Show With Joan Rivers’ debuted as one of daytime television’s first ever syndicated talk shows. Like Joan, the show was a bit ahead of it’s time and only lasted one season. This was her first solo enterprise on television.
This video is the debut episode…the topic is one that opens itself to “a river” of double entendres and puns, nudism. Joan’s guests are a lady who owns a nudist camp and her great friend, Johnny Carson. Her emotional intro of Johnny comes around 4:40.
This was shot at NBC New York and I think was done on the third floor in either 3A, 3B or 3K. It could have also come from 8G as at the time, I don’t think there was permanent seating in these studios. Anyone know?
The show’s producer, JEM Productions was owned by Joan and her husband Edgar Rosenberg. Joan often made fun of Edgar for being so cheap, and in this case, the story is true! It takes a lot of expensive video tape to syndicate a show and as the story goes, every couple of days, Edgar and company went dumpster diving for old video tape at the networks and production houses in New York.
Sorry for all the commercials here, but this Hulu video is the only place on the net this rare gem is available. In the monologue, you can see a couple of the RCA TK41s, but later in the Q&A session there are some good shots of the cameras around 17 minutes in. Enjoy and share because this is the only place you’ll ever see this! – Bobby Ellerbee
In the days before Zoom lenses, cameras had rotatable turrets which usually held four fixed length lenses. Here is a scene that shows the difference between the frame sizes each lens gave.
In those early days, cameraman and technical directors would go over the lenses needed for a production on each camera. Part of the set up process was manually adjusting the F stops on each lens. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Look closely…this is very interesting on two counts. First, this is the hard way to do a mat shot…holding the Lucky Strike transparency still for the camera to shoot through is no easy trick, especially in a crowded football stadium.
Second, take a look at the top of the camera door. See the tubes glowing inside? This must have been one of the RCA TK30s permanently assigned to one of the NBC mobile units. It seems that instead of adding the round screen vents, they have cut a piece out of the top of the door for ventilation. Even if the camera was hot, it would usually keep making pictures…the real problem was the heat transfer into the viewfinder and if that got too hot, it would go out and the operator would be blind.
As in the ‘America’s Got Talent’ post just before this, we have a 1950s example of Field Innovation 101. Thanks to Reno Bailey for the photo! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Christina Skaggs And ‘Tattletales’…Photo And Video
At the very start of this video clip of ‘Tattletales’, you’ll see the crane shot from this camera operated by Christina Skaggs. Here she in high on her Chapman Electra behind the set for that opening shot.
There is better quality video of this show, but this is a wildly unique clip from ‘Tattletales’. The show’s regular host was Bert Convy, but in this episode, Jack Narz is hosting with Bert playing the game with other daytime game show hosts, Richard Dawson and Bob Barker and…their wives.
I have not seen this show since it was on (’74-78 and ’82-84) and had forgotten how much fun it was to see these husband and wife teams together. Thanks for the pictures Christina and for reminding us of ‘Tattletales’! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Christina Skaggs…CBS Veteran And Pioneer Female Camera Op
A few days back, we met Christina in videos of her work on ‘The Match Game’. As promised, she’s sent us a few new photos and this the first one…the second one will follow in a separate post with video.
Although camera work has mostly been a “mans world”, there were some highly skilled women along the way who joined in this fraternity and several of them are our friends, like ABC’s Donna Quante.
Here’s what Christina wrote as a caption for this photo…
“This is me on the crane camera on ‘Tattletales’, a Goodson-Todman game show at CBS TV City that aired in the seventies. With me is Jim Riley, my arm operator and a great cameraman who shot Red Foxx and the old Playhouse 90’s way back when. I was so lucky that I came in at a time when big variety shows were the norm and I worked with the men who came from radio and started TVC when it was nothing but an orange grove. A lot of great talent on this show – one of the very friendliest who sat on my crane arm and told me stories about shooting Playhouse 90’s on that very stage many years before was Robert Blake”
Thanks for the pix and background Christiana, and thanks for reminding us of ‘Tattletales’…more on that in today’s next post! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
UPDATE 2021: Unfortunately the original video of the studio tour is gone, BUT…in it’s place is a fun bit Seth did with now retired NBC veteran Bob Friend, so take a look and laugh along with our friend Bob, the man who kept NBC Studio 8G alive and well for many, many years!
In Studio 8G, that desk platform was called “the shoe”. There are photos of the new set below and a shot of 8G from 1948 with it’s unique NBC built cameras.
Bob Friend and his electrical crew had a very busy couple of weeks rewiring and relighting this space, as did the set designers. Our other friends there, Mike Knarre and Bryan Durr got the time off but as camera and video men, probably had some catch up practicing to do to get used to the new layout.
NBC Studio 8G was 30 Rock’s second studio conversion from radio to television, with the first being NBC’s 3H which was created in 1935. Although the official 8G dedication was April 22, 1948, television had been done there since May of 1946. The “official dedication” date marks the date the studio was self sustaining with permanent lights, it’s own control room and cameras. As a side note, NBC Burbank was actually in operation two years before it was “officially dedicated”.
The first show ever to come from 8G was also television’s first variety show…’Hourglass’, which debuted May 9, 1946 when 8G was still officially a radio studio. Later that year, ‘Let’s Celebrate’ was done here as a one time show on December 15, 1946 with Yankee’s announcer Mel Allen as host. Contestants competed in stunts for prizes. ‘The Swift Show’ (a Swift Company sponsored game show), and ‘Americana’ (a game show about American history) started here in 1947.
I don’t think 8G, as a radio studio, had built in audience seating but it was thankfully three times the size of NBC’s only other television studio, 3H. “Radio Age” states that 8G could handle four consecutive shows, which meant the often fifteen minute and half hour shows, with only one small set, could be staged one after the other from different walls of the studio. Congratulations on the new digs guys!
When the studio floors were redone in 8G and 6B last year, I wish I had thought to ask for a few pieces of the concrete that got jackhammered and dumped. Some amazing history has happened on those floors! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Often called “The Man Of 1000 Voices”, here Mel admits to David Letterman that he really only has about 400, which by any measure is still stunning. This is one of the best interviews I’ve seen Mel do…they have a lot of fun and many of your favorite characters will show up here! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Mel Blanc did over a 1000 different Voices in over 5000 CARTOONS ! – UNIQUE GENIUS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnmJALXh_sI Melvin Jerome “Mel” Blanc (May …
The State Of Television In 1952…Hosted By Dave Garroway
This is a film made by RCA for use in theaters…a kind of “short subject” infotainment project designed to sell the virtues of that new thing called television, and more directly, RCA television sets.
Until Milton Berle came to television as host of ‘The Texaco Star Theater’ in June of 1948, television set sales moved at a snail’s pace. After that, sales took off, but the sets were still expensive. RCA and others manufacturers ate a lot of the costs and had to be aggressive in their marketing and going into theaters to sell their wares was part of the game.
As this opens, we see Garroway of the set of ‘Today’ in it’s first year, with an RCA TK30 and a huge lavalier mic. You’ll notice that a lot of the subject matter revolves around sports…that was one of the few areas that networks had for bringing immediacy to their broadcasts. All four, Dumont, ABC, CBS and NBC depended heavily on boxing and in particular, wrestling as a draw for the male demo in those early years. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
From 1952, here is the first host of the “Today” Show, Dave Garroway, talking about the relatively new medium of Television, showing many of the shows that w…
Memories Are Made Of This! 1959 Tour Of KOA TV, Denver
This will start as we are lead into the telecine room, complete with a telop machine…something many have never seen before. Soon we are in video control and at next up, we see two brand new Ampex VR 1000 video tape recorders. After that, we see some film editing and a UPI photo fax machine and then, we are in KOA Radio.
At 8:29 we get down to business in the television studios, equipped with the latest transistorized lighting board, rear screen projection and new RCA TK11/31 cameras. Thanks to John Schipp for reminding us of this clip…arguably one of the best local station tours ever. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
Until yesterday, Christina Skaggs never knew about Eyes Of A Generation, but thanks to one of television’s top hockey cameramen, Kevin Vahey, she does now. Over the years, we’ve seen Christina here as the female camera operator on ‘The Match Game’ and two clips with her were posted here yesterday. She’s added some comments to those and will be sending along some pictures soon.
This is where I say THANK YOU! Not only to Kevin, but to the many that have passed along Eyes Of A Generation to their friends and co workers. I am constantly amazed how many of television’s top people are here every day. More than that though, I can’t even begin to tell you how appreciated your one of a kind “eye witness” input and comments are!
At this very moment, people at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, the BBC and many more networks and production houses are looking at this site, as are many on the sets of some of the biggest shows. Camera operators, video editors, writers, producers, directors, engineers, lighting and set designers and more are all here and I thank you all for coming! We even have network talent and executives among us, and lots of friends in Argentina, Brazil and Australia.
I try to curate television history here by telling stories, but it is you who bring it all to life with your comments, photos and additions. Collectively, we as a kind of family, fill in a lot of blank pages about television’s past and present…something that no one else anywhere is doing. I thank each of you for your interest, passion and input! Thank YOU being a part of Eyes Of A Generation! – Bobby Ellerbee
PS. Welcome also to Jack Young who’s recently joined in.
Eyes Of A Generation…Masthead Companion Photo And Names
This is the companion to the photo I use as profile picture for this site. It was taken at the same time and thanks to some veterans in The NBC East Group, we now know the names of these cameramen.
This is at NBC Brooklyn on the set of ‘Sing Along With Mitch’ and at the bottom is one of NBC’s legends, Frank Gaeta. In the middle is Gene Martin who we can’t really see in this photo, but you can in the photo at the top of the page. Speaking of the top, that’s Jack Bennett on the Chapman crane. To see the profile picture in full, just click on it.
I think the man in the sleeveless shirt is a dancer. Notice the cable from the sound boom goes up to the ceiling. At the time, all the TK41s three cable…they were huge heave bundles and needed extra utility men to handle them. The only way to try and keep the floor as clear as possible was to run the boom cables into rotating spring arms on the light grid. Is that Schrafft’s or Chock Full O Nuts coffee?
I thought you may like to see this. It’s one of the best articles I’ve seen on Paul Shaffer’s time with David Letterman. Enjoy and share!
– Bobby Ellerbee
Like an increasing number of baby-boomers, Paul Shaffer will be 65 and out of a job next year. Actually, it’s much more than a mere job; it’s his life-long vocation (granted, really half his life), the beating heart of his self-identity, and his dependable sanctuary of fellowship and fun—the sudden absence of which might be compared to the death of a treasured friend.
“Well, how can you grieve when you’ve had such a long run?” Shaffer asks me over dinner at Remi, one of his favorite haunts a block from The Ed Sullivan Theater, where he has led the CBS Orchestra for the Late Show With David Letterman for the past two decades.
Before that, he spent a decade on Letterman’s 12:30 a.m. NBC show, conducting “The World’s Most Dangerous Band” from his rock’n’roll keyboard. “It’ll be 33 years by the time we’re done. It’s been fantastic. It’s been absolutely wonderful. Anybody who would be complaining about that should be put away.”
Perhaps Shaffer isn’t in denial—the first of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s “Five Stages of Grief”—yet members of Letterman’s staff were openly crying in April when Dave, now 66, announced on the air that next season will be his last. “You have some weepers back there,” that night’s guest, Johnny Depp, told the late-night comic, while Shaffer quipped: “Do I have a minute to call my accountant?”
Chewing on a breadstick at Remi, having just taped Monday’s installment featuring actor Michael Cera and frisky dogs broad-jumping into a 20,000-gallon pool of water out on West 53rd Street, Shaffer says: “Of course we’re—or at least I am—enjoying every show much more now, knowing that there are a finite number left.”
These days naked-pated and a teensy bit stouter than when he started out as Dave’s musical director and comic sidekick (a tonsorial and corporeal evolution that is unsparingly documented on YouTube), Shaffer talks in the smooth, reedy, dulcet tones that are known to millions of viewers—a less cartoonish version of the voice he uses to send up slick showbiz insincerity.
Who can forget Shaffer’s scene-stealing cameo in the classic 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap—as Polymer records executive Artie Fufkin? His voice is occasionally punctuated by that famous laugh—Shaffer’s trademark rasping honk—and that endearing, mole-like squint.
“We were young when we started,” Shaffer says, acknowledging that the last days—before Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert takes over the time slot in September 2015—will be poignant and possibly emotionally draining. “Yes, absolutely. It’s been so long that I can’t remember a time when I didn’t do this show,” he says. “There are upsides to it [the final curtain], of course. There’s the freedom to do lots of other things—to travel somewhere. I want to do all kinds of things. I want to keep doing music primarily, of course. I’d like to act, too. But it has really has been our whole life for all of us on the show, day in and day out.”
Years ago, however, Shaffer had believed that he might not be long for the job after getting visibly angry at his boss on the air—a remarkable departure from the bandleader’s normally genial if ironic onstage persona.
“I really lost my temper,” he recalls, recounting how he vented at Letterman when frequent musical guest Todd Rundgren showed up at the studio too late to rehearse, and Dave (perhaps needling Paul) kept announcing that the band would play a string of completely unprepared Rundgren hits.
“Well, I couldn’t play all his songs because we hadn’t had a chance to rehearse, but Dave kept coming back to it,” Shaffer recalls. “He just kept firing it in, and I lost it and I started yelling at him on the air. I said, ‘Listen, anything you want, I give you! You want a song by the Gin Blossoms, you got it!’ Then I felt terrible afterwards. What have I done? The man pays my salary.”
After the show, Shaffer phoned Letterman in his office to apologize, “and he was laughing. He said, ‘That was hilarious. Feel free to do as much as you want whenever you want to do it. You can come over and sit on my head if you want.’ ” Shaffer adds: “I thought he was pretty damn nice, because I thought I was gonna get fired.”
Not a chance. The Canadian-born Shaffer—who grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario, where he started watching Johnny Carson in the early 1960s via the NBC affiliate in Duluth, Minn.—sees his role with Dave as an updated composite of Carson’s bandleader Doc Severinson and sidekick Ed McMahon. “Doc and Ed—D’ed,” Shaffer says.
“It can take a certain amount of adjustment for a musician, whether jazz or rock, to get his head around the job of providing cues for comedic situations,” says Shaffer, who parsimoniously punctuates Letterman’s monologue jokes and celebrity interviews with the odd comic chord, or otherwise chimes in with a comment, question, or a simple “uh-huh” or “oh yeah,” as needed. “Sometimes, rather than speak to the camera, Dave will turn and speak to me,” Shaffer says, “and I got to realize he needed sort of a bed of sound.”
In one memorable moment, prodded by Letterman, Shaffer asked Julia Roberts, who had recently broken up with a boyfriend, “You getting laid these days?” Hilarity ensued.
“Not everybody wants to do it”—that is, cue up the laughs—“or understands that it could possibly be important to do. But it was always my favorite thing to do,” Shaffer says, adding that “less is more.” Regarding a rival talk show, no longer on the air, he says: “I remember the Leno band and what their punctuations would sound like—a certain disjointed timing sometimes.”
The fierce and often bitter competition with Jay Leno, who took NBC’s Tonight Show, the prize Dave was denied, and came from behind after Dave’s 1993 CBS debut to consistently beat him, had the all trappings of a late-night cold war.
“Yes, of course,” Shaffer says. “What can be said? Dave was the best that ever did it. He would say Johnny Carson was, but I’ve worked for Dave every night and he’s just the smartest and most on-top-of-it, the quickest. It’s the most spontaneous show on television. Maybe Jay was more commercial, or more universal. I don’t know.”
Shaffer acknowledges that with the march of time—through Letterman’s quintuple bypass surgery and a harrowing blackmail incident (during which the host admitted on the air that he’d “horribly hurt” his wife by sleeping with female members of the staff), the program’s anti-showbiz sensibility has softened considerably.
“I don’t think we can deny that we became the establishment,” Shaffer says. “We were making fun of the format—and then we became it. You have to kind of admit that. And I think Dave wants to be age-appropriate.”
But also real, unscripted, and sometimes painfully honest, as when Dave owned up to his extramarital misbehavior. “The show, to him, has always been something like a forum,” Shaffer says. “His attitude, I think, is if we can talk about it, how bad can it be? When he does that kind of thing, I think it becomes more than just a show. It is the real reality show. I think the Kardashians may set up a few of these situations.”
Shaffer, who was a something of a musical prodigy, studied classical piano and played in a high school rock band, and then a progressive jazz band at the University of Toronto, where he also DJ’ed on the campus radio station. (His attendance at John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s December 1969 press conference touting a peace festival is memorialized in a CBC documentary at around the 34-minute mark. Shaffer, who recalls that he was too intimated to ask a question, is the skinny kid with shoulder-length hair and a Fu Manchu mustache.)
He was named musical director of a full-dress production of Godspell at the tender age of 22, when he became fast friends with cast members (and future stars) Gilda Radner, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas and Victor Garber. By the mid-1970s he was a member of the house band and an occasional performer on Saturday Night Live, where he was the piano player for Bill Murray’s oleaginous lounge-singer act.
He left the show in 1977 to star in a short-lived sitcom flop, in which one of his fellow cast members was Mickey Rooney, and returned to SNL after the cancellation.
Shaffer says he hit it off immediately with Letterman in 1982 when he was summoned to a meeting at 30 Rock, where Dave was looking for a bandleader for his soon-to-launch program. Their musical tastes were in synch, and Letterman was deeply knowledgeable, Shaffer says.
When he told Letterman that he wanted to play instrumentals of Motown hits and soul music, the former standup comic’s face lit up. “Well that sounds great,” he recalls Letterman saying. “I’ve always considered myself the Wayne Cochran of comedy anyway,” Letterman added, referring to the over-the-top soul singer-turned-Christian minister who favored extravagant outfits and a towering white pompadour.
Shaffer is among a happy crew of Letterman loyalists—including producers Maria Pope, Barbara Gaines and Jude Brennan, and bass guitarists Will Lee and Sid McGinnis, and drummer Anton Fig—who were present at the creation in the early 1980s and 1990s, when Dave launched and developed his groundbreaking, showbiz-satirizing Late Night program that aired after the more traditional Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
When NBC declined to make Letterman Carson’s successor—as chronicled in a best-selling book and an HBO movie—he took much of his staff to CBS and there’s been astonishingly little turnover since the Late Show’s debut in 1993.
“He’s a very loyal employer—loyalty is big one for Dave,” Shaffer says. “I don’t think it’s any secret that he’s not comfortable around a lot of people. He’s not a social guy. So his core team are people among whom he does feel comfortable, and he will socialize with them for that reason.”
Indeed, Shaffer is not simply an employee, he’s a close-enough friend to have been invited repeatedly with his family to Letterman’s Montana ranch, where he and his two kids—a 21-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son—spent quality time with Dave, horseback-riding and such, during the recent two-week August hiatus. “My wife didn’t come because she had a broken foot,” Shaffer says, referring to former Good Morning America booker Cathy Vasapoli.
And now, the show, the life, the camaraderie, is slowly but surely slipping away. “We’ll have to have a reunion,” Shaffer says of the Letterman-less future. “We have to, and I think we will”—even if Shaffer must organize it. “I’ll do whatever I have to do.”
He’s the bald guy who leads the CBS Orchestra every night on the Late Show with David Letterman—and soon, like his boss and buddy, he’s going to be out of a job.
‘CBS Evening News’…29th Floor, Graybar Building Location
As I wrote earlier today, in the post just before this, the famous newsroom we see here was located in The Graybar Building which is adjacent to Grand Central Terminal.
The first time we see this is during the debut of television’s first daily half hour news broadcast on CBS, September 2, 1963. As I mentioned earlier, this set was recreated almost exactly when the show moved to the CBS Broadcast Center in late 1964. The biggest change would be the line of teletype machines that would be installed on the wall to the right of Cronkite as you view him through the camera.
The map wall to his left, and even the “fishbowl” office would be part of the surroundings, but the fishbowl something we never saw…till now.
Please click on each individual photo to read the detailed captions I have included. There is some very interesting new information there! Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
September 2, 1963…CBS Leads Television News To Half Hour
It was 51 years ago today that television news went from fifteen minutes to thirty minutes and Walter Cronkite lead the way. One week later on September 9, NBC’s ‘Huntley Brinkley Report’ followed. It would take till 1967 for ABC to join in.
Before I get too far along, I want to give you some new information on just where this broadcast took place. It was done from the CBS Newsroom which was on the 29th floor of The Graybar Building, which adjoins Grand Central Terminal.
As you will see in the CBS News video from last year, there is a segment that describes the mad dashes from the newsroom to the studio via the Grand Central cat walks. Up until a few weeks before the September 2 half hour kick off, Cronkite had done the news from Studio 42 in Grand Central and the dash was from the newsroom in the Graybar Building to the studio.
The set we see here, which is the same one we saw in all the famous Kennedy Assassination video of Cronkite, is the redone Graybar newsroom. Interestingly, the Greybar newsroom also had a “fishbowl” office which was across from, and to Walter’s right. This exact same setup was recreated at the CBS Broadcast Center news studio when it moved in late 1964…complete with the famous “fishbowl” office. It was actually the producer’s office and had big glass windows…during the broadcast, the staff would gather there to watch. Afterward, they would gather there with Walter to critique the show. More in this soon. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
On Sept. 2, 1963, the “CBS Evening News” revolutionized journalism when it doubled in length — just in time for some of the most momentous stories in U.S. history
September 2, 1983…The Tom Brokaw Era Begins At NBC
In 1983, September 2 was a Friday. That was the day it was announced on the ‘NBC Nightly News’ that beginning Monday, Tom Brokaw would take over as the sole anchor.
On April 5, 1982, Brokaw began co-anchoring NBC Nightly News from New York with Roger Mudd in Washington. After a year, NBC News president Reuven Frank concluded that the dual-anchor program was not working and selected Brokaw to take over.
Along with Peter Jennings at ABC and Dan Rather at CBS, Brokaw helped usher in the era of the TV news anchor as a lavishly compensated, globe-trotting star in the 1980s. The magnitude of a news event could be measured by whether Brokaw and his counterparts on the other two networks showed up on the scene. Brokaw’s retirement in December 2004, followed by Rather’s ouster from the CBS Evening News in March 2005, and Jennings’ death in August 2005, brought that era to a close.
In the clip, Tom talks about his early days in Omaha at KMTV and WSB in Atlanta. I remember him from Atlanta, along with fellow reporter Judy Woodruff who was there at the same time. Enjoy and share! – Bobby Ellerbee
As a new college graduate, journalist Tom Brokaw was newly married to a doctor’s daughter and desperate for a job. Watch as Tom reflects on starting out maki…
