‘SNL’ Surprise…The Real Baba Wawa On Weekend Update!

Congratulations to Barbara Walters on a brilliant 50 + year career in television, and god bless her for her sense of humor that has served her well since Gilda Radner began “doing” her in 1976.

#i” target=”_blank”>http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/weekend-update-barbara-walters/2781213 #iAhead of Barbara Walters’ retirement on May 16, Weekend Update pays tribute to the television journalist by compiling clips of her being impersonated on the show – until the real Walters stops by to defend herself and reveals the secrets to her success.

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The “F” Word’s Television Debut!

George Carlin would love this. In March of 1947, nine months before Howdy Doody debuted in December, Bob Emory went on the air with the first hit kid show, live from New York. The show was called ‘The Small Fry Club’. It was an instant hit and New Yorkers fought tooth and nail for tickets for their kids.

Several years earlier, Emory had worked with Bob Smith to create ‘The Triple B Ranch’ for radio, which is the forerunner of the Doody show, so Emory knew what worked. The Small Fry show aired Monday through Friday at 7PM for five years on The Dumont Network.

As we all know now, no live show is without peril…especially kids shows. ‘The Small Fry Club’ had a large set and even though Dumont’s studio was state of the art, the overhead lights were not powerful enough, so cherry lights were added to the front of the camera pedestals. One day in the summer of 1947, the floor manager was listening in his headset for a cue from the control room and with his concentration diverted, backed into one of the cameras set of cherry lights.

First, there was a blood curdling scream, then a very loud and clear “Fu*k” from the floor which Emory tried to cover with an extra big laugh (which wasn’t hard to do). The photo below shows the result of this occasion as from then on, the cherry lights were enclosed in metal boxes.

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Deep Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater, Part 2

The 13-story, brown brick and terra cotta office building with a ground-floor theater was built by Arthur Hammerstein between 1925 and 1927, and was named Hammerstein’s Theater after his father, Oscar Hammerstein I. The theater auditorium had a number of beautiful stain glass windows that were removed for safe keeping when the Letterman renovation was done.

Below left you can see part of one of a dozen or so wooden crates that these windows are safely packed in. The NYC Historical Commission requires that they be safeguarded and stored on site.

In the center we see the “elephant columns”. At some point in the 1950s, Sullivan took interest in an elephant act touring with Ringling Brothers and wanted them on the show. Before they arrived, some calculations were made and it was determined that they were too heavy for the stage without some extra support, so, these two columns were added under center stage. Today, this space is the Green Room for visiting bands that close the show.

Behind the doors on the right is where the Studio 50 control room used to be. This photo was taken from the lobby entrance near the box office. To the left is the interior theater lobby and directly behind me is the arrival lobby and the main entrance doors on Broadway. This space is now part of the auditorium again and the control room is in the basement with all the other production and technical elements of the show. More soon!

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Deep Inside The Ed Sullivan Theater, Part 1

On the left, Jackie Gleason’s favorite door! This door is located in the basement and on the other side of it is a now capped set of stairs, but in Gleason’s time, the stairs let to The Cordial Bar. The Cordial was located inside the 13 story office building which adjoins the ground floor theater. Gleason and later, Sullivan guest stars could have a cocktail without ever leaving the building.

Unlike Hurley’s near NBC, The Cordial did not have a hotline, but the phone number was as familiar to stage manager Eddie Brinkmann as his own home number.

Speaking of Gleason, here is a great wall size photo of him in the crew lounge. The cameraman on the right is CBS legend Pat McBride who worked both Gleason and Sullivan. ‘The Jackie Gleason Show’ debuted from here, CBS Studio 50, on September 19, 1952. Although Sullivan’s show started in 1948, his show came from CBS Studio 51, The Maxine Elliot Theater till 1954, which is when the show moved to 50.

Speaking of legendary CBS cameramen, I was thrilled to see Dave Dorsett’s locker still intact…name plate and all! Dave retired from Letterman a few years ago, but comes back occasionally for fill in and, just for the fun of it. Dave Dorsett was with CBS for over 45 years and where Walter Cronkite went, Dorsett went too. Dave moved to Late Night when the show moved to CBS and was one of Letterman’s favorite foils on the set.

The staff and crew of ‘Late Night With David Letterman’ is a very warm and loyal bunch. It’s a family all it’s own and I am grateful to them for their hospitality and welcome. The Dorsett locker says a lot about their attitude and style. It’s a nice touch from some very nice people.

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The Other Half Of ABC TV3

Last week, I posted a photo of me at the ABC News anchor desk, the place Diane Sawyer sits. It is an L shaped desk with the long part of the L on her left in the opening few shots. I was sitting at the long L part of the desk.

As she delivers the news, this is what she sees in the other half of TV3.

On the left below, you see the short part of the L desk and beyond it is the set of ‘Real Biz’ with Rebecca Jarvis. This is a business headlines show mostly seen on the ABC News website, but I think it’s also a GMA insert.

There are four Ikegami robotic cameras in the studio which has half of the long wall (to our left) open so that cameras can move into the adjoining producers space (with windows to the outside) when Diane turns to deliver the news from the long side of the L. Either way she is shot, there are huge video walls behind her. On the right is part of the massive TV3 control room.

Soon, we’ll see that Brian Williams also reports from a studio with two sets at NBC.

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Camera Bashing…David Letterman’s Favorite Warm Up Trick

I hope Larry Thorpe and our friends at Canon are seeing this. You couldn’t ask for a better ad campaign premise on Canon durability.

This is Camera 2 on the set of the Letterman show. The bashing started long ago when Dave Dorsett was on this camera but continues with Al Chalino at the controls.

Before the show, announcer Alan Kalter comes out and starts the warm up with some help from Paul Shaffer and company. The second half of the pre show is done by David himself and the first thing he does on his entrance each night is to swing the hand held mic a few times and with practiced aim, let’s it land with a loud “thunk” on top of the Camera 2 lens.

With the camera in the full down position, he talks to the audience with one foot on the pedestal base and rests his right arm on the lens. The end of the lens is against his chest and actually, it looks extremely comfortable. I wonder just how many lens shrouds they’ve been through over the years? As for the handheld mics, I think they may last about a month (photo below in Comments) before they peter out.

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Will Buster and Riley Go To ‘Late Night’ With Stephen Colbert?

Left and center are the dogs of ‘The Colbert Report’, Riley and Buster. I met them the other day while I was visiting the show at NEP Studio 52. Believe me…I was impressed.

I had already picked up on a warm atmosphere at Coblet’s HQ, but when the dogs showed up…that sealed the deal. I was already glad that Stephen was chosen to succeed David Letterman, but now that I know he and his staff are “dog people”, all the better. With all due respect to “cat people”, dogs rock and in my opinion, it is not a coincidence that DOG is GOD spelled backward.

There is in dogs a love like no other! On the right is me with my dogs Jack (L) and JJ. When I got home yesterday, we had a full half hour of face licking and belly rubbing, and I loved every second of it, and with them in the bed with me (as usual), I slept like a baby last night.

Thanks to Bill Willig, Studio 52 facility manager, for the tour on Monday and for sending along the photos.

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NBC Studio 8G…’Late Night With Seth Meyers’

Yesterday, I showed you the “smoke machine” and described the theatrical effect of bringing the light beams into play. You can see that on the right.

On the left is the 8G camera crew with some real pros! Two of these names will be quite familiar to the ABC family as Paul Martens and Gene Kelly have spent many years there before becoming part of the new NBC crew assembled for the Meyers show.

Left to right are Paul Martens (camera), Buck Buchanan (jib), Ryan Fox (utility), Gene Kelly (camera), Kenny Coyle (utility), Mike Knarre (camera) and Mike Zecca (camera).

When I was in 8G last Wednesday, I didn’t get to meet them but to my great delight, Mike Knarre invited me back to say hello. When I got there Monday morning, Buck Buchanan’s jib had been remounted on a Vinten Fulmar pedestal for smoother action and better control. Paul spent thirty five year at ABC and his first camera was a Norelco PC70. Gene was at ABC nearly thirty years.

The one thing I forgot to do while I was in 8G was to get a few pictures of Bob Friend, but I hope Mike will help me with that. Bob has been the head electrician in 8G since 1992, but his service at NBC started long before that. As I have said before, Bob Friend has the perfect last name…he’s a nice as they come and knows 30 Rock like the back of his hand.

For the record, although we in the south have the better known reputation for hospitality, I am here to tell you that northern hospitality is alive and well! I can not fully express my gratitude for the warmth of the reception that I had in New York. Everyone at ABC, CBS, NBC and NEP (the Colbert and Stewart show homes) were gracious and friendly beyond description. I did not encounter even one “grumpy New Yorker” anywhere…even on the streets! For yankees, they’re actually pretty good people! Bobby Ellerbee

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The CBS Evening News With Scott Pelley

On April 19, 1962, Walter Cronkite took over as CBS news anchor. Like the Douglas Edwards program that had preceded his, the show was fifteen minutes long and the title was ‘Walter Cronkite With The News’.

On September 2, 1963, CBS was the first to go to a half hour format and that day the show changed it’s name to ‘The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite’. Since 2011, Scott Pelley has been the anchor and the show is done from Studio 47 at the CBS Broadcast Center.

I was on that set last week while some camera tests were being done and as you can see, they are using robotic cameras on the show. All three of the network news shows come from large studios with spacious sets, but the Pelley set is the largest. In the photo on the right, you can see that this is the only network news set with a contingent of news staffers and producers adjacent to the anchor desk.

In my market, Atlanta, NBC and CBS news both air at 6:30 and ABC news airs at 7. I split my time between Brian Williams and Scott Pelley, but I tend to like the CBS news a little more because to me, they seem to have more hard news where NBC seems to have a softer news feel. ABC seems to be softer than NBC.

Frankly, I long for the Cronkite days. Not because Walter was a great reporter, which he was, but because as Managing Editor of the show, he chose the stories they covered. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, all the networks had harder news and in depth coverage. Usually the last story of the night, across the dial, was a human interest story a minute or two long. It seems that now, the soft news has crept back to the halfway point of the shows which leaves only 21 or 22 minutes of actual air time without the commercials.

I wish network news would go to an hour and bring back hard news. We’ve got plenty of ‘ET’ type shows to handle the Kardashians and the fluff.

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Today at ‘TODAY’

Just got back from the ‘Today’ show. “Bullets Over Broadway” was today’s featured performance in the Broadway series and here are a few shots. More later. Got to pack. I’m sorry I was not able to get the names of the camera crew, but if someone can send it to me, I will appreciate it and post them with more pix from this morning. One more post to follow and then I’m off…back to Atlanta.

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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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The NBC Tour & Best Seat At CBS…The Desk Of William S. Paley

Yesterday I finally saw ALL of NBC…top to bottom. It was an incredible six hour stroll through history that ended at The Paley Center For Media which is where the photos below were taken.

This is the desk of CBS founder William S. Paley; a leather topped card table with numbers that marked the place of each player. Paley sat at the #1 position (seen below left), Frank Stanton sat at the #2 position. It’s likely that Fred Friendly of CBS News spent a lot of time at the #3 position.

Who else sat at this table? You name them…Jackie Gleason was probably lured from Dumont at this table. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Edward R. Murrow, Don Hewitt, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Douglas Edwards, Mike Wallace, Red Skelton, Ed Sullivan and most of the names that are synonymous with CBS have probably sat here at one time or another. This is the true “catbird seat”.

We were able to end our day here because television history’s true protector and conservator was with us. It was a pleasure and honor to have Ron Simon join us for the NBC tour. Ron is the Curator of The Paley Center and since around 1988, has been archiving and collecting kinescopes and video tape of programs that would have otherwise been lost. Thanks to his efforts, thousands and thousands of hours of rare recordings are alive and well…safe for future generations. We all owe Ron and The Paley Center a debt of gratitude for their efforts.

I spent several hours there Saturday watching some of these rare videos, including the fist ever ‘Honyemooners’ episode in which Art Carney played a policeman. His ‘Norton’ character had yet to be created.

While I am on the sad subject of lost footage, here is a story SNL cameraman John Pinto told me at lunch Friday. John had worked at ABC and was hired for SNL’s debut a few months before it started. To keep him occupied till that October 1975 debut, John was assigned a job he still regrets having had to do.

For three months straight, it was his job to bulk erase tapes, most of which happened to be from ‘The Tonight Show’. To quote the announcer at the Hindenburg crash, “Oh, The Humanity!”

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Just When You Thought It Couldn’t Get Any Better…IT DOES!

Today, is the halfway point in my trip that has just been incredible. Yes, I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff, but the best part is the people I’ve met! Today, the pace changes a bit and I have a little more time between events, but the intensity stays the same.

At noon, I’ll meet Rick Sheckman and some of Letterman crew at Studio 50. I couldn’t do this yesterday because it was a double tape day. You can not begin to imagine the frenetic pace behind the scenes of even one of these daily major network shows, but doing two shows in one day…now you’re talking major effort!

After that, I’ll have lunch and go back to Studio 50 for an in depth tour of one of television’s most hallowed venues with Gady Reinhold who was my guide for yesterday’s three hour tour of the CBS Broadcast Center.

At four this afternoon, I enter live television’s ground zero…NBC Studio 8H to visit with the man that has the best job in the world! John Pinto’s camera is the one on the Chapman Electra crane, and that I know of, is the only crane cam operator on the face of the planet. Around five is the dinner break and we’ll get a bite and tell stories, which I can’t wait to hear. Maybe some of the other cameramen will join us?

After that, I’m taking ‘Tonight’ cameraman Kurt Decker to dinner. I wish he could come with to dinner with John and I but Fallon is in the middle of taping then. To my surprise, both Fallon and Seth Meyers tape Fridays. Most of the shows, like Letterman, John Stewart and Colbert do two shows on Thursday for replay on Friday. Monday, I’ll be at Colbert’s studio and go to John Stewart’s show.

Tomorrow, I’m spending most of the day at The Paley Center For Media. Yesterday, Paley curator Ron Simon gave me a grand tour (pictures soon) and I can tell you that they have a very nice Ampex AVR 2 quad VTR and tons of other interesting video machines in their archive office.

Tomorrow night…well, let’s see…that would be Saturday night in New York, right? I humbled to report that I will get to experience the best of both worlds. I’m going to the dress rehearsal of ‘Saturday Night Live’, and will be able to get back to the hotel in time to see the live version at 11:30.

Dress rehearsal is a bit longer than the show because they include a few extra sketches to see how they register with the audience and the best ones get to air. The sketches that didn’t make the cut either die or get a rewrite for a chance to be seen on another episode.

On Sunday at 10, I get the full top to bottom tour of NBC. My hosts will be Dennis Degan (who came with me yesterday for the CBS tour) and Joel Spector, who started with NBC in 1965, a year before his boyhood friend and neighbor Gady Reinhold started at CBS. Gady will be joining us too.

I know you want to see pictures. I want to show them to you, but it is very difficult for me to do this on the road. I’ve taken over 400 pictures so far. I’ve tried as best I can to take notes and even bought an audio recorder to help me place things. I’ll have to wait till I get home to organize and name them.

As I have said, this is like drinking water from a firehose. I love it and am trying hard not to spill even a single drop, but there is so much to take in!

I am closing with this shot from Tuesday’s visit to ‘Tonight’. This is their great camera crew, AND the director. The tall man on the left is ‘Tonight’ director Dave Diomedi. On his left is Edward Pladdys who’s control area is under the audience seating where he controls 4 robo cameras including the two rail cameras on each side of the studio. On Diomedi’s right is Richard Carter who operates camera 5…the Merlin. My gracious host at ‘Tonight’ is Kurt Decker who is to the right of Richard and Kurt is camera 1 on the show. In red next to Kurt is Mike Cimino on camera 3, and if the name is familiar, his dad is the TD on SNL. Pat Casey is next to Mike and Pat is on camera 2. All the way on the right is camera 4 operator Bruce Dines. In just over seven weeks, these seven men have brought a very appealing and fresh new look to the way ‘Tonight’ is presented. CONGRATULATIONS on a job WELL DONE! More later! Bobby

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