Inside CBS Studio 42…1940
Inside CBS Studio 42…1940
These rare photos from 1940 are some of the first ever of CBS television operations from their new studios, and were most likely taken in Studio 42, as it was 1,000 square feet bigger than Studio 41. In 1939, W2XAB (now WCBS) began broadcasting with an all electronic system it had bought from RCA. The new studio complex in Grand Central Station had it’s transmitter atop the Chrysler Building. Like RCA/NBC, CBS had started earlier, in the late 1920s, with mechanical systems and those crude broadcasts had come from the transmitter site. Some dates on the Grand Central studios put it in use as early as 1936 and makes sense as CBS could have used the space for experiments on it’s Field Sequential color system. W2XAB transmitted the first color broadcast in the United States on August 28, 1940.
On June 24, 1941, W2XAB received a commercial construction permit and program authorization as WCBW. The station went on the air at 2:30 p.m. on July 1, one hour after rival WNBT (channel 1, formerly W2XBS and now WNBC), making it the second authorized fully commercial television station in the United States. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued permits to CBS and NBC at the same time and intended WNBT and WCBW to sign on simultaneously on July 1, so no one station could claim to be the “first”, but, there was a glitch. WCBW’s initial broadcast was the first local newscast aired on a commercial station in the country.
Confused. So when were the 57th st studios acquired? Also numbered 41,42…
Does anybody know who the architect was? Was it William Lescaze (who redid some Bwy theatres for radio); or was it Alfred Fellheimer (who converted the Vanderbilt guesthouse into the CBS radio studios)? Last time I was up there, it was Trump’s tennis club, and the former control room was a lounge overlooking the courts–but the common areas had that Lescaze look. (Architects were not mentioned in the RCA Broadcast News article.)