The Studio

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 25, 1999 / 11:09 AM EDT / CBS

Studio 58, a digital, state-of-the-art broadcast facility now under construction, will become the home of The Early Show, CBS News' new weekday morning broadcast anchored by Bryant Gumbel and scheduled to debut Monday, Nov. 1.

Sharing the facility will be CBS News Saturday Morning as well as the morning and noon newscasts of WCBS-TV, the CBS station in New York.

When it is completed, you'll find the new studio at Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street in New York City, on the ground floor of the General Motors Building at Trump International Plaza.

BDI, Inc.
News Station: where you'll learn the latest news

The studio itself, with a 35-foot ceiling, encompasses 5,000 square feet, but that's just part of an entirely new CBS News broadcast facility. All together, the facility's space will be about 24,000 feet (and that's without counting mechanical and roof space).

The control room (as well as a newsroom, offices, and makeup and dressing rooms) will be located one floor below the studio and will extend under the building's outdoor plaza.

Included in that space is a full working kitchen and dumbwaiter for the production of Martha Stewart's and other cooking segments. (The Martha Stewart kitchen set currently is located across town at the CBS Broadcast Center. The whole thing is being moved to Studio 58.)

BDI, Inc.
Demonstration Area: where guests will show their stuff

Visitors will be able peek in on live broadcasts through large windows at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 59th Street. But with the flip of a switch, four panels of "privacy glass" between the main anchor location and the windows will have the capacity to instantly turn the transparent glass to opaque.

Five permanent outdoor Internet kiosks on East 59th Street will allow the public access to CBS.com and other CBS Web sites for regularly updated news and information. The Early Show Web site is, like the studio, now "under construction."

The set for The Early Show has been designed to accommodate five different areas:

Home base: The primary anchor location
A news setwhich the news anchor will deliver the headlines and news of the day and the weather report can be done
An interview area
A multipurpose area which will house Martha Stewart's kitchen and Bob Vila's projects
A demonstration area for appropriate segments.

BDI, Inc.
Interview Area: where newsmakers and other celebrities will speak

The interview and multipurpose areas also will be able to accommodate musical performances.

But The Early Show won't be confined to the studio. Outdoors, several permanent cameras will provide live views of Central Park, the Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue, New Jersey, the Hudson River, and several other New York City locations.

The architect of the Studio 58 project is Meridien Design Associates Architects of New York City. The set designer is Broadcast Design International, Inc., of Carlsbad, Calif. BDI also designed the set of the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather and the CBS Newsroom in New York.

All images used with this article were designed by Broadcast Design International, Inc.

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