Radford Studio Center
CBS Studio Center is a television and film studio located in Studio City, California (located in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley section). It is one of three studio facilities owned by CBS located in the Los Angeles area, and the others include Television City (located on Los Angeles' West Side, near Hollywood) and Columbia Square in Hollywood, which serves as the home of the network's local broadcasting properties. Through its parent company, Viacom, a fourth production studio lot serves as home for Paramount Pictures, also located in Hollywood and not far from Columbia Square.
History
Mack Sennett, a slient film producer and director, came to the San Fernando Valley and opened his new movie studio at this location (at what's now Ventura Boulevard and Radford Avenue) in May 1928. He named the studio after himself. Sennett sought out to build his own studio after filming many of his movies, such as the Keystone Kops, and those featuring Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, and Fatty Arbuckle, in and around the surrounding areas of Hollywood. However, five years later, with the Great Depression coming about, Sennett was forced to file bankruptcy and the studio lot was sold off to another film company, Mascot Pictures.
Mascot renamed the newly-acquired studio after itself, and the film company specialized in the format of the Saturday Afternoon Matinee, which were serials. By 1935, another film company, Monogram Pictures, along with Mascot and Consolidated Film Corporation merged together to form Republic Pictures Corporation. The studio lot was renamed Republic Studios. The new studio specialized in B-movies, including many Westerns starring the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, and John Wayne, all of whom get their first breaks with Republic.
In 1963, CBS Television came into the picture, where it signed a lease with Republic to become the primary lessee of the studio lot, and almost immediately began to place their network-produced filmed shows such as the long-running Gunsmoke and Rawhide in production there, and later, the classic comedy, Gilligan's Island. The piece of land (at the northwestern egde of the lot) where the lagoon scenes that were filmed for Gilligan's were paved over in the mid-1990s to make room a new parking structure. The studio lot was renamed the CBS Studio Center. CBS purchased the studio lot outright in April 1967, nearly 39 years to the day it first opened. CBS into investing money to build new soundstages, office buidlings, and technical facilities. To make up for these investments, CBS began to rent out its studio lot for independent producers, and the newly-created MTM Enterprises (headed by actress Mary Tyler Moore and her then-husband, Grant Tinker) because the Studio Center's primary client, beginning in 1971.
Moore's memorable sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, began filming here in 1971, along with its spinoffs, Rhoda and Phyllis. In July 1982, CBS formed a partnership with 20th Century Fox to share ownership of the Studio Center, thus once again renaming, this time as CBS/Fox Studios. However, that relationship was short-lived as Fox sold its interest of the Studio Center to MTM, and it became CBS-MTM Studios. In March 1992, the studio once again CBS Studio Center, when MTM (whom themselves were bought by another company) sold back its interest to CBS. The Studio Center will serve as a new home to CBS's local TV station, KCBS-TV, along with sister station KCAL, as they will vacate Columbia Square to move into a newly-built office and studio facility located where the house for the hit CBS reality series, Big Brother, once sat.
Television Shows Produced Here
- 3rd Rock From the Sun
- A Different World
- American Gladiators
- Big Valley
- Combat
- Dave's World
- Evening Shade
- Falcon Crest
- Gilligan's Island
- Grace Under Fire
- Grounded For Life
- Gunsmoke
- Hill Street Blues
- Lou Grant
- Malcolm in the Middle
- My Three Sons
- Newhart
- Phyllis
- Rawhide
- Rhoda
- Remington Steele
- Roseanne
- Seinfeld
- Spin City
- St. Elsewhere
- That 70's Show
- The Bob Newhart Show
- The Larry Sanders Show
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show
- The New WKRP in Cincinnati
- The White Shadow
- Thirtysomething
- Titus
- Wild Wild West
- WKRP in Cincinnati
Theartical Films Produced Here
- Addams Family Values
- April Fools
- Boys on the Side
- Dr. Doolittle
- Dr. Doolittle 2
- Father of the Bride
- I Love Trouble
- Le Mans
- Little Big Man
- Mr. Wrong
- Scream 3
- The Addams Family