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Saturday Night Live is filmed in Studio 8H, a 6,102 square foot television studio inside 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. The show has come from that room since 1975. Tickets are free, but NBC accepts requests by email in August only. The British version is made in London instead.<\/p>\n
That last line matters, because this search splits two ways: there is an American show and a British one. SNL UK is shot at BBC Studios’ TC1, the flagship studio at London’s Television Centre, which we covered in full here<\/a>. LateNighter drew the parallel itself, noting that TC1 is as steeped in television history as Studio 8H at NBC’s Rockefeller Center headquarters. Everything below this paragraph is about New York<\/a>.<\/p>\n Studio 8H began as a radio room, and an unusually grand one. At the time of construction it was the world’s largest radio studio, built three storeys high and roomy enough to house a full orchestra. NBC converted it for television use in 1950, primarily to put Kraft Television Theatre out live. It was revamped again just before SNL’s 1975 premiere at a cost of $250,000. That quarter-million is the only renovation figure any of the sources puts a number on. <\/p>\n Nobody I’ve read makes much of the obvious consequence. A sketch show on American network television is still running out of a radio hall, converted for television use in 1950 and refitted just before the 1975 premiere at a cost of $250,000. Anyone who has loaded a PA into a function room with one double door and an unblockable fire exit will recognise the shape of that problem. Scale it up to a national broadcast.<\/p>\nThe world’s largest radio studio, revamped for $250,000<\/h2>\n