Franklin Avenue

Where Have all the TV Studios Gone?
The L.A. Business Journal files a piece this week on KCOP-Channel 13, which abandoned its La Brea studio earlier this year to shack up with News Corp. sibling KTTV-Channel 11 in West L.A.
The story just gives a passing mention, however, to the other TV stations that have disappeared from Hollywood and the east side in the past few years. It’s truly been a mass exodus.

Besides the KCOP move, Spanish-lingo KWHY-Channel 22 recently moved in with Spanish sib KVEA-Channel 52 in Glendale. KWHY’s and KVEA’s news operations, however, are now housed with big English language sister KNBC-Channel 4 at the NBC lot in Burbank.

KWHY spent decades on Sunset Blvd., across the street from the no-longer-open-24-hours Home Depot. The KWHY building, which was a auto garage in the 1920s before being converted into a TV studio, has been completely razed in just the past few weeks. A retail center is planned for the KWHY site, at Sunset and St. Andrews.
Besides broadcasting Spanish programs, for decades KWHY ran local business news during the day from studios at that site. Competition from cable nets like CNBC finally convinced KWHY to dump the stock market coverage in 2000.

KABC-Channel 7, meanwhile, moved to Glendale about a year ago after 50 years at ABC Television Center at Talmadge and Prospect in Los Feliz (the onetime Vitagraph Studios lot). The lot, now renamed “The Prospect Studios,” is still home to productions such as “The Shield.” (That’s right, we live virtually across the street from Michael Chiklis’ Det. Vic Mackey and company.) ABC soaps like “General Hospital” are also filmed there. But Dallas Raines, Johnny Mountain and company are now fiddling with their “Doppler 7000” next to that massive “ABC7” sign you’ve seen while driving north on the 5.

KTTV-Channel 11, of course, left Metromedia Square/Fox Television Center at Sunset and Wilton in the late 90s; I’ve watched every day on my commute in recent months as LAUSD rent-a-demolition teams tore down the lot. A new high school will be built there, so countless teens can now taunt Sam Rubin as he drives to and from work next door at KTLA.

KCBS-Channel 2 is still at Columbia Square on Sunset, although plans to move in the coming years to a new building on the CBS Radford lot in Studio City. KCAL-Channel 9, which spent decades on Paramount’s Melrose Blvd. lot in this building, moved in with KCBS earlier this year; with quarters way too cramped at Columbia Square, KCAL will join KCBS in Studio City whenever that studio is built. (Channels 2 and 9, by the way, once resided in separate studios at 1313 N. Vine, the one-time Don Lee-Mutual Broadcasting headquarters, where the Motion Picture Academy now houses its archives.)

KNBC-Channel 4 moved to Burbank in the early 1960s. NBC once upon a time operated here from the corner of Sunset and Vine, where the Washington Mutual Bank now stands.

Once KCBS and KCAL leave next year, KTLA and KCET will be the last remaining local TV stations in Hollywood. That’s quite a change from just seven years ago, when seven local outlets called the area home.