CBS Television City still kinda stands at the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. At the beginning of many a TV show, an announcer would say, "From Television City in Hollywood…" which was true if you think of "Hollywood" as a concept, not as a geographic area defined on a map. If you go by the map, Television City is and always has been more like "Hollywood Adjacent."
A long, long list of TV shows were made there, not all of which appeared on CBS. For example, Bill Maher's Real Time (and before that, his Politically Incorrect) were done at CBS Television City. Among the CBS shows that were housed in that facility at times were The Jack Benny Program, The Red Skelton Show, The Carol Burnett Show, The Judy Garland Show, The Late Late Show with its Various Hosts, The Danny Kaye Show, The Young and the Restless, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, All in the Family…
Oh, it's foolish of me to start listing them. Hundreds and hundreds of shows, including many you watched, were done there — game shows, specials, sitcoms, daytime dramas, variety shows…everything. Its most famous tenant for over half a century is The Price is Right, which is now relocating to a studio in Glendale. Everything else has moved…somewhere.
I hear mixed things about what, if anything, remains in that complex. If any sort of production is still there, it won't be there for long. A whole new media city with some production and lots of retailing will soon begin appearing on that piece of real estate. Reports vary on how much, if any, of the existing structures will be incorporated into the new layout.
Online, you'll find a lot of people bemoaning the loss of all that history…a lot of folks wishing Television City could live on forever. Part of me is sad to see it go but another part of me has long since come to terms with the fact that the world moves on and old buildings are torn down to make way for new buildings. I worked for a number of years in the old Hanna-Barbera building on Cahuenga Boulevard and a lot of TV shows I loved were made there.
But there came a time after years of sitting empty when it was semi-demolished and turned into, I believe, some condominiums and a health spa. Hanna-Barbera was no longer a functioning studio. It had become a mere trademark for Warner Communications to apply or not to certain properties that had their origin decades ago on that property. I had every reason to be nostalgic about the place and to think of its repurposing as destroying something that was meaningful to my life…but when asked to join a "save the studio" campaign, I couldn't work up the emotion.
If Bill and Joe were willing to sell it, why should others raise funds to preserve it? And we weren't talking about something you could fund with a couple of bake sales and a Sunday afternoon car wash in the parking lot. We're talking about tens of millions of dollars so the building could remain…for what purpose? What would you put in it to fund the upkeep and the property taxes? Some people said it should be a museum of H-B history…but no one volunteered to make that happen. They just wished someone else would do it.
The folks who are sad about the closing of CBS Television City today probably sound a lot like people who were sad in 1952 when Gilmore Stadium was torn down. Gilmore Stadium was the home of the Los Angeles Bulldogs, the first professional football team in Los Angeles. It also at times housed other football teams including the Los Angeles Mustangs, the Loyola Marymount Lions and the Pepperdine Waves. It was also the site of two National Football League Pro Bowls.
And it sometimes housed a baseball team, as well. Long before L.A. had its first major league team, the Los Angeles Stars played there until the construction of Gilmore Field next door. And Gilmore Stadium also housed midget auto racing and rodeos and circuses and other events. Surely many people felt a great sense of loss when it was torn down in '52.
Gilmore Stadium was torn down so they could build Television City in its place. And then five years later, Gilmore Field was torn down because Television City needed additional parking…and also because the field was kinda useless once the Brooklyn Dodgers migrated to Los Angeles. The team started playing in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum until their own stadium could be built. Someone probably felt sad over the demolition of whatever was demolished to make room for that stadium.
The point is that sometimes, people miss something when it goes away…but it makes room for something else that is so wonderful that people will miss that new enterprise when it goes away.
I have no idea if what will be built on the site of Television City will be wonderful. There have been some strong arguments against the new occupant of that corner, mostly having to do with what it will do to traffic in the area. Having been personally inconvenienced a few times by James Corden doing his little Crosswalk Musicals outside the studio in the middle of Beverly Boulevard, I shudder that the new development might turn out to be ten times worse…and every day.
But the argument that Television City should remain because it was part of our lives is a different argument…and I'm not saying I won't miss it. I probably will, especially when I'm sitting in gridlock caused by its replacement. I just think we have to accept the concept that the world around us cannot look the same way forever just because we want it to. Some things absolutely should be preserved but there has to be a better reason than "It's been there as long as I can remember." So I'll just tell myself that if the Columbia Broadcasting System can live without it, maybe I can learn to live without it too.