Kevin and the Peacock – Part Eight

In 2007, a decade since I had given my first NBC Studio tour, I was given the chance to do it one more time. As a school teacher, I had tried to tell my students about life behind-the-scenes, but they had to see for themselves (click here for a video montage of the Carson studio, taken about nine-years-ago).

One last tour of NBC

My sister and I with Jay Leno, taken several years ago when we were Tonight Show audience members

As I returned to my television roots (not the miniseries “Roots”, but my actual meager beginnings in the industry), it was as if I’d never left. In 1997 I was accepted as an NBC Page. For the next year I fell into a routine: give a tour… work in the ticket office… give a tour… work in the ticket office… give a tour… seat an audience… lather… rinse… repeat.

Somewhere in my collection of useless junk I am sure I still have the suit I wore as a page (I actually still wear the tie to job interviews and other formal events). I thought it would have been funny to wear the polyester blue sportcoat and gray slacks again, but in the end I decided against it. And in the end it didn’t matter. As I passed people in the halls, they’d say “Hey Kevin,” then do a double take right out of a sitcom. Oddly enough, it seemed as if, in the eyes of many, I hadn’t really left NBC… they simply hadn’t seen me in a while (for the record, I last set foot on the NBC lot in June of 2002).

I led a group of 15 of my students and three adult chaperons on an apx. 90 minute tour… roughly half an hour longer than a typical tour. I was trailed by Guinnevere, an able-bodied (oof) female page who, weeks into the job, was nowhere near as jaded or cynical as I was by that point.

The first part of the tour is a five minute opening video. I kid you not… it was the same video played 10-years-ago. My students kept shushing me as I recited the corny narration from memory (“The pictures at first were fuzzy, but there… they… were… MAGIC!”). According to the video, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” was still on NBC, Greg Kinnear was still a talk show host, and “America’s Talking” was still a cable network.

The color scheme of the corridors had changed from shades of brown to shades of gray. Aside from that, there was only one difference… and it was striking. NBC’s Studio One, home for decades to “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” is now home to “Access Hollywood.” Access used to be in Studio Five, space shared with the defunct “Later with…”, but Studio Five is now home to a show on the Spanish station owned by NBC. To me, the thought of Nancy O’Dell standing where Johnny once stood is enough to make me weep, except for one thing: the set is freakin’ sweet. It is a gleaming, silver and white, two story structure that all but consumes the entire floor of the studio. And, as part of the flooring system used in the set, directly above the spot where a barely regarded brass medallion rests on the stage floor itself, there is a small plaque which bears the name of Johnny Carson and the years he spent in the studio. Somebody cared enough to remember… and that’s more than I expected.

A ticket to The Tonight Show

I saw several people I used to work with, and they shared stories about several others. I am happy to report I only ran into the people I considered to be “the good guys and gals” in the industry. All the hotheads and egomaniacs either faded away or were promoted to network management. It was as good a homecoming as I could have hoped for under the circumstances.

The CNBC facility, now located at Universal Citywalk instead of the Catalina Building, was a bubbling cauldron of change. Michael Hollander, CNBC’s West Coast Bureau Chief, agreed to give my students a tour of his new studio and newsroom. Michael is unique in two ways. First, he is a good and respectable network executive who insists on being hands-on with all aspects of the studio and office. Second, he is the first guy at a network to hire my dumb ass.

During the summer of ‘94, at the start of OJ’s “Trial of the Century,” I worked at CNBC as a staff/production intern. I was there when Tom Snyder announced he was moving to CBS. I was there when Bob Berkowitz interviewed Pedro from “The Real World: San Francisco.” I was there for an incredible four hour interview Dick Cavett conducted of Mel Brooks… an interview so unbelievably comprehensive that if the folks at CNBC know what’s good for them, they will release it as a DVD. And I stood in for a very late Pauly Shore on the Daisy Fuentes show and the on-camera flirtation between Daisy and me, though never broadcast, was the talk of the network for weeks (I’d give my eye-teeth for a copy of that tape, but it apparently didn’t survive the move). Suffice it to say, it was a fun time.

CNBC’s new facilities were physically larger than the old ones located in the Catalina building (the Catalina Building and the surrounding 9 acres adjacent to the Burbank studio were reportedly sold by NBC/Universal for a staggering 55 million dollars), but they were capable of less. Though they have multiple cameras, they do not have a control room like the old facility did. A few months before I started working at CNBC, there was a fire at their headquarters in New Jersey, and the entire network went off the air. Eventually, thanks to a little rewiring at 30 Rock, Tom Snyder and the west coast gang performed yeoman’s work as, for nearly five uninterrupted hours, they became the CNBC television network (the videotape of that evening stands as one of the best in my collection). CNBC West would not be able to bail out their east coast colleagues today, nor could a series be headquartered in their studio.

Not much of the old CNBC crew remain, most opting to go to CBS when Snyder started “The Late Late Show.” But the sense of a place where talented people do their best work for a typically thankless company is still there.

Those wondering why I am often so harsh and critical of the state of television need only know that I worked with a terrific bunch of people. To see so many of them again, still plodding along, put me in the mindset of “there, but for the grace of God, go I.” I want to be working with them, but I simply cannot compromise on quality or integrity. I could for a while, but not anymore. And the industry is so broken, it is unlikely that it will become what I know it has the potential to be in my lifetime. NBC should be the number one network. There is a tradition and a heritage to the place. There is a pool of talent unmatched by any other studio in California. But there is no legacy. There is nobody to point to these people and say, “show me what you can do” or “do this and do it right.”

As I was able to get various people to recount stories of former glories, it made me a little sad. It made me sad because, after a five year absence, I asked people what I’d missed and the reply was always, “nothing.”

Gone is the legacy. Gone is the glory. Gone is the “magic” promised by the video at the top of the studio tour.

NBC’s Burbank studio remains (for the moment). CNBC’s new studio stands at the ready. But nothing is happening.