NBC Color City Studios Burbank
RCA's decision to expand television studio facilities required moving to the real estate market in the San Fernando Valley-Burbank area, with land purchased from Jack Warner.[8] The newly-renovated NBC Color City Studios opened in March 1955, as the first television studio designed specially for the origination of color television broadcasting, although their rivals, ABC and CBS would gradually add color broadcasting to their studio facilities in later years.
KNBC moved to a new building in 1962. In 1964, the Radio City Hollywood building was demolished, as NBC moved more of their West Coast television operations to the Burbank facility. The site is now occupied by a bank.
This studio hosted production of many of NBC's game and variety shows from the 1950s through the 1990s, including Hollywood Squares from 1966 to 1980, Wheel of Fortune from 1975 to 1989, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in from 1968 to 1973, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson beginning in 1972. The latter two shows would frequently reference their home in "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" though Tonight would invariably begin each episode with the technically incorrect announcement, "From Hollywood..." During the late 1960s, Carson's Tonight Show would move for periods to Burbank, using studio 1. After the permanent move to Burbank in 1972, Bob Hope's shows taped in studio 1, with The Tonight Show taking a hiatus while Hope produced his specials. In 1971, President Richard Nixon announced Henry Kissinger's secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai and his impending visit to China from the studio.[9]
The Tonight Show would stay in Burbank through Johnny Carson's retirement, during Jay Leno's tenure as host until the end of his first run in 2009, when it moved to an all-digital studio on the Universal lot in 2009 for the short-lived The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. The show moved back to the Burbank Studios when Leno returned as host of The Tonight Show on March 1, 2010. The show used studio 11 until Leno resigned as host on February 6, 2014. After that, The Tonight Show moved back to New York City's Rockefeller Center when Jimmy Fallon replaced Leno as host, marking the end of the 42-year era in which the show had recorded in Southern California.[10]
