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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Even The Energizer Bunny Needs A Break Now And Then…

Just a short post tonight…I’m exhausted. The day started at The Paley Center For Media and then moved to the CBS Broadcast Center. It just ended at the The David Letterman Show. On the left, me taking one of the 182 photos I shot today. On the right…well, I’ll show what was on the other side of the door soon! More in the morning. Right now, I’m going to have another Carnegie Deli corned beef sandwich…the worlds best! Good Night All! Bobby

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My ABC Tour And NBC 8G Tour & Taping On The Seth Meyers Set

On the left, me at Diane Sawyer’s desk at ‘ABC World News Tonight’ in ABC TV 3. The same studio the Peter Jennings reported from. When this was taken, ‘Good Morning America’ was still on, as you can see in the monitors behind me. The desk is L shaped and the long part of the L is on my right, but this is the usual reporting view.

As I was getting up from the desk, Howie Mandel happened to walk by. Glad to report that he too is a Squidbillies fan! Speaking of Squidbillies, I just left ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’. The warm up comedian, Ryan Riess, walked up into the audience and happened to speak to my guest…Ron Simon, Curator of The Paley Center For Media. He noticed my ‘Squidbillies’ jacket and asked about it. I told him I was the voice of Sheriff and he had me stand up and take a bow! There were a lot of ‘Squidbillies’ fans there tonight!

I was in the elevator with Steve Higgins today, announcer for ‘Tonight’ and he too is has been known to watch ‘Squidbillies’ “now and then”.

In the middle, below is a shot of me with an brand new Ikegami on the set of ‘The Chew’ which had just ended. This is in ABC TV 2 and in a different building that the news set. TV 1 and TV 2 have a collapsible wall between them and were used together when Regis Philbin debuted ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’? Katie Couric’s show ‘Katie’ is done in TV 1 just after ‘The Chew’ finishes and on the right is a shot of ‘Katie’, just before just two minutes before the show started, as the warm up was ending.

I have many more pictures to share, but will have to wait till I get home to post them and do justice to the details…my schedule is just too packed here. ABC’s Bob Franklin was my host today and I’m thrilled that he took three hours of his time to show me around. You could not ask for a better guide…he’s a rare gem and has been at ABC since 1975, which makes him one of the few veteran broadcasters left in the building. Bob knows where all the bodies are buried! He buried them!

I felt very at home at ABC as many of our Eyes Of A Generation friends were there and I got to meet them. Walking down the hall at NBC this afternoon, I ran into our friend Alan Coffield who I had thought of earlier in the day and wondered if I would see him.

At 2 today, I had the pleasure of spending an hour with the busiest man at 30 Rock…Ian Tremboly. He is NBC Executive Vice President of Television Operations, Production & Engineering and for him, 18 hour days have been the norm for the past couple of years.

With ‘Tonight’ moving to NYC, renovations to the sixth floor studios A and B, and preparing 8G for Seth Meyers have been major tasks. There are also new control rooms being built on the seventh floor that will be on line in a year or so. Meredith Vieira’s show will be done from 6A which will soon be renovated soon.

One of the things I was most impressed with, is Ian’s personal interest in NBC’s grand history, and his desire to preserve it and have it reflected in the very place that this unique history was made…even in the new facilities there. 30 Rockefeller Plaza IS television’s living history! I think you will all agree that his efforts have been wildly successful. 6B and 8G looks fantastic, sound incredible and feels very warm and welcoming. This is truly state of the art television…and then some!

At 3 today, I went to meet Bob Friend in Studio 8G, where Bob has been the chief electrician since 1992, but he’s been with NBC a lot longer. No one ever had a last name that fit them better! I got to see everything you could possibly want to see, AND MORE! Believe it or not, there are German swastikas on some of the old, original plumbing. RCA’s builder bought a lot of the metal piping from a manufacturer in Munich which is where the Nazi party was very strong and the owner of the plant included a swastika into the raised metal letters on the piping made in 1933.

Bob also showed me where famous NBC Orchestra conductor Arturo Toscanini’s elevator was. The private, one person elevator is gone, but the call button and the plate with lit up and down arrows remains beside where it used to be in what is now a small maintenance office. He conducted in 8H, which was known for many years as “the Auditorium Studio”. Ian Trembly told me that he had seen the original blueprints for 8H and in that first set of plans from the late 1920s, it was then being designed as a live theatrical space…much like a broadway theater stage.

Again, I felt right at home and was treated like a friend of the family at NBC and am most grateful for the warm reception and incredible hospitality of the many I met today. My thanks also to those at ABC who extended their kindness at every turn. New York hospitality is alive and well!

In closing tonight, I’ll give you the answer to a question that I had wondered about. Most of you know that among other things, the floors in 6B and 8H were jack hammered up and the old suspended floors replaced with new suspended floors. I wondered how, in a skyscraper in the middle of NYC, do you do that? How did they get the thousands of feet of old concrete out and the new concrete poured? The answer…with an army of men with wheelbarrows! Can you imagine the cost? I was afraid to ask!

Tomorrow I’m at The Paley Center in the morning with Ron Simon. At 1, I’m with Gady Reinhold for a three hour tour of the CBS Broadcast Center and then it’s time for ‘The Late Show With David Letterman’ at The Ed Sullivan Theater! I’m drinking from a fire hose, but loving every drop!

One last thing. My hotel is incredible. A friend recommended it and it is one of the most elegant places you have ever seen. Right behind it is The Ziegfeld Theater…home of Perry Como. A block over is Carnegie Hall. Best of all…the world famous Carnegie Deli, with NYC’s greatest corned beef sandwiches, is a half a block away! Can it get any better? Stay tuned…it’s only Wednesday!!!

Till tomorrow! Bobby Ellerbee

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My Day At ‘Tonight’ And NBC Studio 6B

Yep! That’s me at Jimmy Fallon’s Desk and behind Camera 1 on the set of ‘The Tonight Show’!

This morning, I told you I was on a “special mission” and that there would me more later. Well…it’s later and frankly, I am having a bit of difficulty putting into words what this day has been like! It is without question, one of the greatest days I have EVER spent anywhere, doing anything!

I told you that I had tickets for ‘Tonight’, but what I didn’t tell you was that I had been invited to spend the day on the ‘Tonight’ set. I arrived at NBC, my first time there, at 11:30 as the guest of Kurt Decker, who is behind Camera 1. He took me into Studio 6B, sat me at the producer’s table and immediately, the first of three rehearsals of tonight’s musical act, David Byrne, started.

I promise you that within two minutes, tears of joy welled up in my eyes! Honest! What I saw was a ballet performance without description! Before me, five of television’s sharpest camera men were dancing with their cameras like you have never seen! It was like watching a flock of birds move in a beautiful unison. Their coordination is amazing…their instincts razor sharp! Every camera (four peds and one Merlin arm) were constantly moving…up and down, in and out and back and forth. I was truly a thing of beauty!

I can not honestly recollect ever being made to feel so welcomed and instantly relaxed by a group of men whom I had never met. I’ll introduce you to the cameramen and director of the show in a separate post with a “class picture”.

After the Byrne rehearsal, Kurt showed me all of the 6th floor studio spaces and the 7th floor control, video and audio rooms. Then, we went to lunch at The Playwright, which is as much like the famed atmosphere as Hurley’s as one could possibly get. Kurt and I were joined by Camera 3 operator Mike Cimino and our friend Dennis Degan from ‘Today’. Mike’s dad is the long time TD on SNL and he showed me pictures of his dad sitting behind Johnny Carson’s desk when the show came from the famous Studio 6B.

After lunch, Kurt and Mike went back to 6B for meetings and Dennis and I went to ‘Today’ Studio 1A and to his edit room on the 5th floor. At 4, we picked up our VIP tickets and went up for the taping and had a blast! Dianne Keaton is on tonight as is Dane Dehaan who is playing the Green Goblin, in the new “Spiderman” movie.

As I write this, I am still swaying from the four hour train ride from Boston to New York. I have thought about this and have come to the conclusion that I can not do justice to the photos and stories behind them with the schedule I have here. I will be posting some along the way, but the bulk will have to wait till I get back.

Tomorrow morning, I’m at ABC and tomorrow afternoon I have meetings at NBC starting at 2. Around 5, Ron Simon, Curator of The Paley Media Center will be joining me for the taping of ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’!

Yes, I’m drinking water from a firehose, but loving every drop! MANY THANKS TO KURT DECKER, AND THE WHOLE ‘TONIGHT’ CREW FOR A DAY I WILL NEVER FORGET! Bobby Ellerbee

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Headed For ‘Tonight’ Show And 30 Rockefeller Plaza!

It’s 5 AM in Boston, and and I’m leaving on Amtrak for Penn Station in NYC now. Dennis Degan will be joining me for the taping this afternoon at 4, but as soon as i get to the city, I have a “special mission” which I will report on later “Tonight”. Wahooooooooo!

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Eyes Of A Generation…On Tour

By noon today, I hope to be standing in The Museum Of Broadcast Technology in Woonsocket, RI with my good friend Paul Beck. I’ll be taking as many pictures along the way as I possibly can, however my usual early morning posting schedule may be out the window for a few days.

I’ll show up when I can with what I have, so keep and eye out and remember…visit the page itself. Some of these posts will probably be albums and you can see everything better here. Remind your non Facebook friends that they can see everything on this page at the main site’s “Live Stream” tab. Be good and I’ll see you soon! Bobby Ellerbee

http://www.eyesofageneration.com/live-stream.php

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Eyes Of A Generation…On Tour…One Week From Today

Next Sunday morning, I’ll get a top to bottom tour of NBC. My tour guides will be Dennis Degan of ‘Today’ and Joel Spector, who began with NBC in 1965. Joel is still the chief audio engineer on the ‘Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade’ and has been doing the show for around twenty five years. Although he “retired” a few years back while working on SNL, he gets called in frequently to work shows like the ‘NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams’.

Accompanying me will be my tour guide from Thursday and Friday at CBS, Gady Reinhold, who’s been with CBS since 1966. Who better to show you the CBS Broadcast Center and Studio 50?

Joel and Gady were neighbors, and both loved television. As teenagers, they made it their mission to visit all the shows and studios in the 50s. Both are walking encyclopedias, but add Dennis to the mix, and this will be one of the most interesting tours anyone could ever imagine, much less have the experience of taking.

Since my first interest in television at around age 11, 30 Rockefeller Plaza has been my “somewhere over the rainbow”. My first friend in network television was Mrs. Kathryn S. Cole. She was head of the NBC Viewer Relations Department. Starting in 1961, I would write to her once a month and ask for pictures of the studio and she never disappointed me!

Thick packs of 8×10 glossy’s would appear in my mail box, inside the blue grey envelope with the NBC snake logo on the outside. I was ecstatic and would pour over them for hours on end. I think the last time I wrote to Mrs. Cole was around 1965.

I wish I still had ALL of what she sent, but below are three of about a dozen photos I still have and cherish. On the left is a photo that will be familiar to anyone who’s ever visited the main web site at http://www.eyesofageneration.com/home.php

That’s Perry Como at The Ziegfeld Theater in 1962. In the middle is John Davidson and Bert Lahr, taping “The Fantastics” for ‘The Hallmark Hall Of Fame’, which was done at the Brooklyn studios in 1964. On the right is a rehearsal photo from a 1963 ‘Andy Williams Show’ at NBC Burbank.

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This Looks Interesting…Anyone Know How This Turned Out?

Canon must be proud to know that their lenses are “Letterman Proof”. As we all know, Dave has been known to rough house with them and his friend, Craig Ferguson, has learned from the master.

William French, our friend in San Francisco, sent this overnight. I don’t know what’s happening here, but with a prop lens shroud over the real one, you know that a physical gag is only seconds away.

A note said this was from a Letterman episode taped 4/24/14. I can’t find the clip…anyone have it? 4/24 would have been Thursday, and both the Thursday and Friday shows are taped that day, so this could be from either show.

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NBC’s “Radio Ear”…The First IFB or Ear Prompter

To help radio crews and floor reporters cover the 1944 political conventions (both held in Chicago), NBC came up with the “radio ear”…a one way voice link from control.

The television people in Studio 3H saw this and thought it would be a good way to make floor directors a bit more flexible since they would no longer have to use a cabled headset. They tried it for a while and then it just kind of petered out for some reason. It would take over 20 years for IFBs to return to the air with television’s coverage of the US space missions.

Below are three versions of the receiver, two headset models with aerials and one as an ear bud with battery packs. The photos were taken in NBC Studio 3H. The lady is a young Cloris Leachman and the bathing suit photo is to demonstrate how hidable the unit it.

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Television’s First News Man…Lowell Thomas

Although Lowell Thomas’s news programs were heard and seen on NBC radio and television, Thomas did not actually work for NBC…he worked for Sunoco, the sponsor of his shows.

Details on television’s first news program are few, and far between, but as best I can tell, Thomas hosted the first-ever television-news broadcast in 1939 on NBC’s W2XBS. I think this was a stand alone broadcast and not a simulcast, and perhaps was only done for one week as a trial run.

Television’s first ever regularly scheduled television news broadcast, which was a simulcast of his radio broadcast, began on February 21, 1940, on NBC Television. While W2XBS New York carried every TV/radio simulcast, it is not known if the two other stations capable of being fed programs by W2XBS, W2XB Schenectady and/or W3XE Philadelphia carried all or some of the simulcasts.

That February 21 telecast was on a Wednesday, and it is possible that the Thomas simulcasts were were only done once a week as midweek summary type shows for television. It is reported that his Wednesday NBC radio shows were summary style shows too.

It is not known when the ‘Sunoco News With Lowell Thomas’ television show ended. Some accounts say it was “brief”, while other sources report that it ended with the outbreak of WW II . Generally, we in the US think of that as December 7, 1941 with the Pearl Harbor bombing, but the war in Europe was already heating up. The start of the war is generally held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland; Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later.

I suspect that the show, with it’s limited viewership, ended in September so that Thomas could devote more time to his radio reporting duties. He is said not to have liked television as it kept him too tied down as he had to be in the studio every day. His radio show did a lot of traveling and he liked that.

In the Summer of 1940, Thomas anchored the first live telecast of a political convention, the 1940 Republican National Convention, which was fed from Philadelphia to W2XBS and on to W2XB. Reportedly, Thomas wasn’t in Philadelphia, but was instead anchoring the broadcast from a New York studio and merely identifying speakers who were about to or who had just addressed the convention.

It would take television till 1948 to present a regularly scheduled evening news show on the network level…that show was the ‘CBS Television News With Douglas Edwards’.

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Am I On The Right Floor? My Ears Tell Me No!

I love ‘Mad Men’, BUT…when I watch, for example, a couple of men or women walk along the “office” floors, I don’t hear a concrete skyscraper floor…I hear a wooden stage floor and the illusion is broken.

Same thing the other day on ‘NCIS’ in a scene set in a big hospital.
Most of you reading this know what I mean because you’ve been on film sets at one time or another. Unlike live television and soap opera sets, film sets are built on raised wooden floors for construction purposes and hiding cables. The sound of actors footsteps on a raised wooden floor is much different than that of walking on a hard floor.

This past Easter Sunday, I was watching ‘The Ten Commandments’ with Charlton Heston. When he was brought before the Pharaoh in chains, the accompanying sound effect add on was jingle bells…not chains. Suddenly I was back in my recliner and not in Egypt.

I don’t often climb on my soap box and will climb down now, but I’ll close with a request for the sound designers to pay more attention. 99.9% of those watching never notice these kinds of things, but for industry people trying to enjoy a television performance, this is one of the things that eject us from the theater of innocent illusion and put us back in the real world.

What are some of the other things like this that throw you off?

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Mel Allen…Columbia University Football, 1946

In 1946, CBS Television began telecasting the home games at Columbia University. CBS Radio sportscaster, and the then voice of the NY Yankees, Mel Allen was chosen to be the host. This photo was taken at Columbia’s Baker Filed on October 5, 1946. A few days later, he would be calling his first World Series game.

The camera is an RCA Orthicon model with a CBS custom made gun sight viewfinder. Although the camera did have a ground glass optical VF, like the Iconoscope cameras, this VF alternative saved the day as seeing the camera viewfinder in bright light was hard, but with long shots like this and a fixed focal length lens, framing was more important.

Allen started his career as the public address announcer for Alabama Crimson Tide football games. In 1933, when the sports director of Birmingham’s radio station WBRC asked Alabama coach Frank Thomas to recommend a new play-by-play announcer, he suggested Allen. His first broadcast was Alabama’s home opener that year, against the Tulane Green Wave.

Allen graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1937. Shortly after graduating, Allen took a train to New York City for a week’s vacation. While in New York, just as a lark, he auditioned for a staff announcer’s position at the CBS Radio Network.

CBS executives already knew of Allen; the network’s top sportscaster, Ted Husing, had heard many of his Crimson Tide broadcasts. He was hired at $45 a week. The rest, as they say “is history”.

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