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CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street (looking toward Hudson River)

The CBS Broadcast Center is a television and radio production facility located in New York City. It is CBS's main East Coast production center, much as Television City in Los Angeles is the West Coast hub.

The nearly block-long facility at 524 West 57th Street, in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan, serves as the headquarters of CBS News and the main broadcast facility for CBS News, CBS Sports, and the New York City O&O flagship station WCBS-TV. Black Entertainment Television also uses the Broadcast Center for 106 and Park and other in-studio shows for the network (Both BET and CBS were part of Viacom before being separated by the Viacom/CBS split). CBS Television Distribution's nationally syndicated newsmagazine, Inside Edition, is also taped at the CBS Broadcast Center.

The Broadcast Center is also the production base for the CBS Radio Network. The network's Master Control (aka Central Control) on the first floor also serves as the routing center for other programming distributed by Westwood One. The radio network's flagship station, WCBS (AM), moved into the CBS Broadcast Center in 2000, after being located for more than three decades at Black Rock, CBS's corporate headquarters at 51 West 52nd Street.

In addition to the Broadcast Center, CBS has two other major studio centers in Manhattan — the Ed Sullivan Theater (CBS-TV Studio 50) at 1697 Broadway, the home of the Late Show with David Letterman; and the General Motors Building (CBS-TV Studio 58) on Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, where The Early Show is produced.

From the 1950s to 70s, another prominent CBS stage in New York was Studio 52 (now the disco-theater Studio 54) at 254 West 54th Street, around the corner from Studio 50. CBS also leased the Himan Brown studios at 221 West 26th Street (now Chelsea Studios) for several shows in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

WCBS-TV's local newscasts are broadcast from studio 46; the CBS Evening News originates from studio 47.^[1]

[edit] History

The building in which the Broadcast Center is located formerly served as a dairy depot for Sheffield Farms. CBS, which had been using studios at Grand Central Terminal and other theaters throughout Manhattan, purchased the production center in 1952 and began using it regularly for TV in 1963. The radio network, which had been based at 1 East 53rd Street, near the old CBS corporate headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue, moved to the Broadcast Center in July 1964, while the television network's master control moved from Grand Central to the Broadcast Center in late 1964.

Until January 2000, the Broadcast Center was home to CBS-TV's soap opera As the World Turns. The defunct serials Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow, and The Edge of Night were also produced at the Broadcast Center.

After a 37-year absence, broadcasting's oldest soap, Guiding Light, returned to the Broadcast Center in September 2005, after 17 years at the EUE/Screen Gems studios on the east side of Manhattan and 20 years at the CBS/Himan Brown studios on 221 West 26th Street. The show had been produced in studio 45 at the CBS Broadcast Center from 1965-1968 before moving to West 26th street. GL used studios 42 and 45 until it went off the air in September, 2009

As the World Turns is now recorded at J.C. Studios in Brooklyn, the former NBC Studios, which housed defunct soap opera Another World. As a result of the move, As the World Turns acquired many of Another World's old sets, which can still be seen today.

In 1996 Brillstein-Grey produced The Dana Carvey Show at the Broadcast Center for ABC-TV, In fact as a jab at CBS (ABC's competition) the show's opening credits has a man with a paper version of the ABC logo on a ladder outside of the Broadcast Center covering over the CBS Eye logo while the announcer proclaims "From The ABC Broadcast Center".

[edit] References

Coordinates: 40°46′9″N 73°59′24″W / 40.76917°N 73.99°W / 40.76917; -73.99