NBC Studios History…ULTRA RARE OPERATIONS LOGS, 1951
NBC Studios History…ULTRA RARE OPERATIONS LOGS, 1951
To give you and idea of the kind of information I have been able to use in my research on this project, here are two pages of NBC’s operations logs from March 12 and 13, 1951. Notice on the left are Kine instructions meaning those programs noted would be shown live but also routed to Radio City for kinescope recording.
The -L and -N abbreviations mean Local or Network. On the Monday, March 12 log, at the top, I’ll give you an example of the other abbreviations…’Miss Susan’ is live from Philadelphia
(PHILA)-N and is shown on the network plus being fed to Kine. Next, ‘Edgar Guest’ is live from Uptown studio B and is network. ‘Bert Parks’ is in 6B at Radio City. ‘Kate Smith’ is at the Hudson Theater. ‘NBC Comics’ is a cartoon show on film coming from Uptown’s telecine studio F.
Notice next, ‘Gabby Hayes’ (F & C)-N means the live part of the show with Gabby is in Uptown studio C while the film clip part of the show (excerpts from his days as Roy Rogers original side kick in the old 1930s serials) came from Uptown’s telecine studio F. Surprisingly, ‘Camel News Caravan’ is done the same way and in the same place Gabby comes from.
All the A, B, C and F designations are inside the Uptown studios. On the next day’s log, we see Kate Smith’s show at the Hudson has a cut in from 3B at Radio City. I hope you find this as fascinating as I do. Many thanks to our friend, Game Show Network historian David Schwartz for these and many more rarities you will see along the way. Enjoy and share!
I wonder what happened to all those kinescopes ….
The most interesting fact about this era of television, for me, was that master control had an associate director call the shots. When I took my first TV job at WNEV, Boston, the ADs were gone and automation took over. However, I saw an AD at WNYW master control as late as 1989!
By the way…notice the Master 5E hand written at the top of the second sheet. 5E was the Kinescope recording room at Radio City. You can barley see it but the Monday sheet says Master F which would have been Uptown’s telecine room.