WBEN’S NEW STUDIO B — WBEN personalities tried out the acoustics of Studio B of the news radio-TV center at 2077 Elmwood Ave. in advance of the move tonight. Pianist Norm Wullen and Mike Mearian are at right. At table are Chief Announcer Carl Erickson, left, and newscaster Jack Ogilvie. Main radio-control room is in rear, connecting radio studios A and B.
The design is for progress in a new, streamlined and air-conditioned building for WBEN-TV and the WBEN AM and FM radio stations at 2077 Elmwood Ave.
The move is under way today for the radio department, and will be completed tonight, following a brief, ceremonial and sentimental sign-off in the Hotel Statler Hilton studios from which WBEN has put its signals upon the air for 30 years.
WBEN AM and FM will go on the air from the Elmwood plant tomorrow morning at 9. Next week the move of TV will be completed, and the same pattern will be followed. Then the Statler studios will be restored to their original form.
THE WBEN stations, TV, radio and FM, will retain their same places on the dials of your receivers. The move of studio facilities has nothing whatever to do with transmission and reception.
THREE DECADES of pioneering, enlightened programming and community service have originated from the top floor of the Statler Hilton.
But in the hotel, extending the scope of accomplishment had become a perennial problem. Often there were superimposed complications, with the unyielding outer walls of the stations’ E-shaped space demanding that all plans be adapted to the building.
In the new location, where a two-story addition has enlarged the former WBUF center, the building is adapted to telecasting and broadcasting needs of the present and future.
THERE ARE modern, compact, efficient facilities for television and for AM and FM radio.
For WBEN-TV, which brought television to Western New York in 1948 and for six years was the only station in the area, there is a centralized arrangement. Two large studios and a small one cluster around a master control room, which includes film- and slide-projection equipment.
In the Statler Hilton, the studios, master control room and projection equipment are scattered.
THE VALUE of the consolidated facilities may not be readily perceptible on home television screens. But it will heighten behind-the-scenes efficiency.
The large TV studios — 24 by 54 feet and 40 by 50 feet — will provide new flexibility and versatility.
They are roomier and have higher ceilings than either studio in the old quarters. More sets can be accommodated. The lights are individually controlled by dimmer switches. Three cameras may be used, if desired. The former limit was two.
The central master control room will permit — if a situation requires it — the use of both large studios for the same program.
RADIO OPERATIONS, AM and FM, are grouped effectively in an ample setting.
Two radio studios are on each side of a common control room. A studio across a corridor adjoins the FM technical facilities. This third studio can be used for both AM and FM broadcasts. There were only two radio studios in the hotel.
THERE IS considerably more space in the Elmwood Ave. plant. There is more storage space for scenery and “props”; office room for sales, program, accounting and the allied departments essential to station operations.
There is a garage for the mobile television transmitter unit. This unit, the only equipment of its kind in Western New York, enables WBEN-TV to televise events originating outside of its studios.
Shaped by experience from many years of retaining a place in the forefront of the television and radio fields, the new facilities are attuned to keeping pace with progress.
BRIEF CEREMONY TONIGHT
WBEN-Radio will broadcast a brief and sentimental sign-off from its studios in the Statler Hilton tonight at 11:30, bidding farewell to three decades in the hotel and signaling the start of a well-ordered move of a nation’s latest and most modern radio-TV center at 2077 Elmwood Ave.
Tomorrow morning WBEN’s familiar 9 o’clock news program will open the day’s programming, which will include Washington correspondent and the Cleveland orchestra. WBEN-FM will originate in the Elmwood studios at the same hour.
Monday morning Al Fox will start the day with the WBEN farm program at 5, followed by the Clint Buehlman show at 6:15 and regular programming thereafter.
The move of studio facilities will not mean any change whatever in the position of WBEN-TV, WBEN Radio or WBEN-FM on the dials of your receivers. Television programs will originate in the Elmwood plant next Sunday morning.
