NBC Studios
The building is well known for housing the headquarters of NBC and the New York facilities of NBC Studios. In 1996, NBC bought the 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m2) of space it had leased since 1933. The purchase allowed the company to introduce new technologies and renovate the space; it also gave them options to renew the lease on the Today Show studios, broadcast from a nearby building, 10 Rockefeller Plaza. NBC owns floors 1-30 & 50-59. The office of Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, is located on the 51st floor of the GE Building.
The building's studios include Studio 8H, the home of Saturday Night Live. Studio 8H was once the largest radio studio in the world, originally home to the NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini. It was converted into a television studio in 1950. The Tonight Show was also taped at the GE Building in Studio 6-B from the early Jack Paar years until 1972, when the show moved to Burbank, California. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon now occupies the former Tonight Show space. During its run, Rosie O'Donnell broadcast her syndicated talk show from the building. Studio 3C is the original home of NBC Nightly News back in 1999 and later became the home of News 4 New York on WNBC in April 2012.
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Famous quotes containing the word nbc:
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)