How revolutionary was 9/4/72?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'Neumms\' date=\'Sep 6 2005, 02:34 PM\'][quote name=\'TimK2003\' date=\'Sep 6 2005, 11:30 AM\']Would it also be safe to assume that at that time, most of the NBC shows were out of 30 Rock in smaller studios where set creativity was kind of limited??

The new CBS Big 3 all originated from CBS TV City, where at least Studio 33 for Joker and Price at least was considerably larger than a studio 8A or a 6B and thus the sets could be bigger

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Good point. The more I think about it, though, Gambit seems like the third wheel. Good game, cool name, fresh graphic design on the cards, and the music was sort of electronic, but the set was lousy--the wood grain and curtains, the toy car on the phonograph turntable. It seems odd considering Heatter and Quigley had probably the best set on NBC with the Squares. Was Gambit in a smaller studio? Is that why they didn't typically if ever have a wide shot of the whole set?

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Some of that may have been H-Q's choice--like most CBS game shows, it probably flitted from studio to studio, so the size didn't really matter--the "Squares" set was in two parts with the producer's table and the art card easels between the two parts and it could've been that Jerry Shaw didn't care for full set wide shots.  Even though he could've gotten one on "High Rollers," you rarely saw the entire set in one shot on that show.

And 8-H was and is 30 Rock's largest studio--it was built for the NBC Symphony Orchestra (and Don Pardo has used Arturo Toscanini's podium as his "SNL" podium for years).  The only studio that the original "SOTC" set, built for Burbank, could fit into was 8-H--well, it could easily fit into the Brooklyn facility originally converted from a film studio for the color "Spectaculars" of the 50s, but NBC tended not to use that studio for daytime shows then (in the 80s and 90s, "Another World" did originate from that facility).

Does NBC still own the Brooklyn facility and if not, is it being used for film or TV now?

[Ian Wallis]

Any effort to date key moments for a genre is going to be somewhat arbitrary, but as arbitrary dates go, 9/4/72 was certainly a major moment in our history.

Especially when you consider that all three shows CBS introduced on that day were relatively big hits.  The shortest run of the three was "Joker's Wild" - and that made it to almost the 3-year mark (not counting the decade in syndication after the network run ended).

How do you think history might have changed if those three shows were all gone in 13 weeks?

[Clay Zambo]

[quote name=\'uncamark\' date=\'Sep 6 2005, 03:04 PM\']Does NBC still own the Brooklyn facility and if not, is it being used for film or TV now?
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Last I saw it--when I lived quite nearby--there were still NBC logos on the building and soap posters in the lobby.  That was not quite 3 years ago, though; things may have changed.

[chris319]

Except for 8H, the 30 Rock TV studios are roughly 45' x 75', but we all know that size doesn't matter. In particular, the sets for NBC Card Sharks and MG '7x had large amounts of open (wasted) space. With a little redesigning they could easily have been compressed to fit into a 45'-wide space and would have looked just as glitzy. OK, so you might lose a flying illuminated sign -- oh well.