On July 26, 1964, the first broadcast finally originated from a building CBS had owned since 1952. From ’52, until that first top-of-hour CBS Radio newscast, the facility had been designated the CBS Production Center, and was mostly used to store and build scenery, and provide office space for shows that worked from CBS theaters like Ed Sullivan’s.

Below is the CBS Press Release that introduces the Broadcast Center in great detail. It took some time for television to get set up there, and the first network offering is believed to be use of the new Studio 41 (old 41 and 42 were at Grand Central) for election night coverage in November of ’64, in black and white. Color came the next year.

CBS Press Release: November 25, 1964
CBS BROADCAST CENTER OPENS NEW ERA IN TELEVISION PRODUCTION; CONSOLIDATED FACILITY IS MOST ADVANCED IN THE WORLD

Electronic Wonderland Features Six Large “Floating” Studios and Computer-Controlled Technical Operations

A new era in the history of broadcasting has begun at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York, the most modern and the most efficient production facility of its kind in the world. Built around a core of six large studios with the industry’s most advanced technical support facilities, the Broadcast Center incorporates the latest achievements in technology for producing superior programs.

It implements designs and procedures formulated after years of world-wide research and development by CBS teams in every aspect of television broadcasting. A versatile, multi-purpose electronic wonderland where broad casts ranging from a news bulletin to a dramatic play to a gala musical comedy can be developed from first idea to finished program, the Broadcast Center contains a total of 495,628 square feet of floor space — more than the combined size of 10 standard football fields, goal line to goal line.

Situated on 11th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, the new CBS facility offers a tremendously increased potential for television programming originating in New York City. Each floor of the production area alone covers more than 100,000 square feet, an area 25% larger than the city block on which The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is located. The opening of the Broadcast Center consolidates CBS studios and support facilities and services which previously had been dispersed in some 14 different locations in New York City.
Two off-premise studios — large theaters located at Broadway and 53rd Street and at Broadway and 54th Street (Studios 50 and 52), each with a seating capacity of close to 700 people — are still being retained to meet the needs of audience shows. Now located at the Broadcast Center are units of the CBS Television Network, CBS Owned television station WCBS-TV in New York City, the CBS Radio Network, the CBS News Division, and various central staff services.

Consistent with the broadcast Center’s announced goal of providing the highest quality of television, its six large studios — all situated on a single floor — are modern miracles of design. The floor of each studio is a concrete slab, which together with the walls is supported by coil springs and neoprene pads. Thus, each studio is, in effect, a separate “floating” structure. This feature plus buffer corridor areas around each studio in addition to ingenious soundproofing insure acoustical isolation. Another innovation in the design of the studios is a lighting grid structure which allows lights to be hung and adjusted from over head walkways without disturbing activity on the floor.

Adjacent to each studio is a control room containing the latest related technical advances of the electronic medium. While the six studios in the CBS Broadcast Center vary in size, each of the six control rooms is the same. Specially designed to assist and enhance the creative activity in the studio which it services, the control room is so arranged that the entire production team maintains continual visual contact with the program director. In a departure from common practices, the control room does not have a window opening overlooking the studio. Each control room incorporates a highly advantageous concept in functional design for broadcasting by providing separate picture, sound and production control areas, plus easy access to the studio itself. These areas can be separated from one another by sliding glass panels, yet all are within line-of-sight with the program director.

All technical equipment in addition to telecine and videotape machines, whose physical presence is not actually required in the control room, has been removed to a central maintenance area. Yet, by remote control techniques, each member of the production team retains full control over those technical elements of the production for which he is responsible. Directly below the floor where the studios are located in the Broadcast Center is the extensive Central Technical Area.

Here is housed the vast amount of highly complex and sophisticated technical equipment needed to bring the broadcast program to the homes of viewers across the nation and, with the aid of space satellite relays, to viewers in other parts of the world. Notable among this array of technical equipment are the Broadcast Center’s computers and the switching systems of unprecedented magnitude, complexity and efficiency in broadcasting. These systems provide the capability to store information on the scheduled use of facilities and the details of the broadcast schedule, and the capability to route all audio and video signals and communication circuits to their proper destination.

Additionally, the systems provide the means, where needed, to start and stop videotape machines and film and slide projectors. From one technical viewpoint, television broadcasting is a continual process of accurate scheduling, precision timing and error- free coordination of the separate elements that make up a program: film, tape, live pickup, commercials, announcements and many other elements.

At the Broadcast Center, this basic broadcast process is now controlled by computers assigned to the program continuity studios where pre-recorded network and local programs and local station breaks are originated. Two computers have been installed. Each has the capacity to store every bit of program scheduling information needed for the en tire broadcast day and, at the precise moment, automatically to select correctly the program element to go out on the air. Still another use of the computers is to record the studio lighting levels worked out during rehearsal for identical repositioning of the lighting controls during the broadcast of the program. Each computer, by itself, can handle all the basic network and local station broadcast schedules. The installation of two units provides backup protection should the need arise, especially since there is a continuing automatic interchange of information between the two computers.

As now constituted, the Broadcast Center comprises three inter connected structures. The first is an eight-story structure. It houses the Music and Record Library, offices of WCBS-TV News, offices of CBS Films Inc., CBS Data Processing, and CBS News production and administrative offices and reference library. The second structure is six stories. It contains offices of the CBS Television Network Operations Department, the CBS Radio Network Operations Department offices and one of the Broadcast Center’s five radio studios, WCBS-TV Program Department, CBS Television Network show units and accounting offices, four film screening rooms, WCBS-TV film editing facilities and the CBS Television Network sound effects department. Also contained in this structure are the cafeteria and stationery shop.

Central to the third structure are the six television studios, the largest of which has an area of 8,45O square feet and the smallest 3,260 square feet, plus their complete support facilities. In this building, too, are the CBS News newsroom, correspondents’ and executive offices, and film editing and viewing facilities. Immediately adjacent to the newsroom are four radio news studios and the television Flash Facility where bulletins are originated. Also In the building are the Television General Technical Area; storage, staging and maintenance area for equipment used in remote pickups; film distribution; scenic design area and construction shops and storage facilities; dressing rooms, wardrobe and makeup rooms; rehearsal halls; film and videotape storage rooms, and emergency power plant. Geared to serve most efficiently the needs of current production of the CBS Television Network, the Broadcast Center was designed with a flexibility factor so that it will have the capacity to meet future expanded physical and technical requirements.

Also, the Broadcast Center is designed for both black-and-white and color program requirements. The original building of the Broadcast Center, ideally located in midtown Manhattan but out of the city’s congested traffic pattern, was acquired by CBS in l952 with the thought of ultimate conversion to a centralized broadcast plant. It was utilized at once for rehearsal halls, scenery construction and storage, and production and administrative offices. A series of studies was undertaken as to the feasibility of such a plan and, after every aspect of the evolved master plan had been fully investigated and reported on by experts, the go-ahead signal was given by top management.

Among these features were massive truck ramps connecting the original floors to a loading dock on the street level. The ramps were retained to provide access to the studios on which scenery and props from the shops and storage areas could be hauled with ease by trailers and battery-powered tractors. Moreover, the extra-sturdy steel and concrete construction of the original building proved to be well suited for reinforcement to support the new, higher roof which was built over the studios.

Also, by careful scheduling to take advantage of available space in the original structure, interior reconstruction was able to precede with minimal interference to the CBS operations already underway in the “Production Center,” as the building was known at the time. When plans for converting the 57th Street property into an integrated television complex were first announced, CBS envisioned that the completed Broadcast Center would provide the CBS Television Network with “by far the finest television facilities in the world.” That vision has now become reality.

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