News 4 New York

News music packages

The set

WNBC-TV has used four sets during this period.

In 1980 WNBC-TV introduced their famous control room set, an update of the motif the station used as NewsCenter 4. News 4 New York (concept, graphics, music and marketing) was created by Peter Sang, Director of Advertising and Promotion at WNBC. The editorial and supervision was successfully overseen and refinded by Ron Kershaw, News Director for WNBC. Based in Studio 6B at the NBC Radio City Studios (former home of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson), the set was very large even by today's standards, allowing for more creative shot composition. The set also made creative use of lighting, discarding the basic bright, flat light approach favored by most TV newscasts, in favor of a more evocative look using key lighting. This, accentuated by the fact that the set made extensive use of black, gave the set a warm but unique look. Many consider this set to be one of the best sets used by not just WNBC, but any American newscast.

The set was used for all newscasts but with a unique feature - two desks instead of one. The upstage desk, closer to the backdrop, was used for Live at Five and eventually Today in New York, as well as weekend newscasts, and contained a large interview area to the right, while the small weather center and slide-up chroma-key backdrop was located on the left; the downstage desk was used for the 6 pm and 11 pm newscasts although the anchors frequently used the desk to toss to reporters and the weather and sports anchors.

The downstage desk was first used during election coverage back in 1979 when the NewsCenter 4 set was located in Studio 3B while 6B underwent extensive renovations. The two desk format was so liked that it was kept and eventually integrated into the design of the News 4 New York set.

The set was used from 1980 to 1993. The set initially featured a skyline view of New York, but was quickly changed to the more familiar monitor banks. On April 1, 1990, to coincide with a major graphical change, an attempt was made to refresh the set for the 1990s. While the basic structure of the set remained, the monitor banks were redone to make them much brighter, the lighting cues were changed to be brighter, and the set was repainted gray and blue. The changes dramatically altered the atmosphere of the program.

In 1993, when the station revived Live at Five from the Today Show set, the station stopped using the control room set. Two sets were erected, one for Today in New York and eventually Live at Five, and a main set for the 6 pm News 4 New York. These sets were retained for NewsChannel 4. During that era, it was found that these sets had bad electrical wiring; hence they tore down these sets and built two new ones. The first was used for Today in New York and Live at Five, and depicted a shot of Midtown; the second was used for the 6pm and 11pm newscasts, and contained the weather center, and a large projection-screen backdrop that used actual camera footage of New York. These sets were used into the second era of News 4 New York.

In 2008, WNBC vacated Studio 6B to make way for Jimmy Fallon's versions of Late Night and eventually The Tonight Show, and moved into Studio 7E; previously a conference room, it was converted to serve as WNBC's "content center", where all news information on TV, the Internet, mobile devices, and New York Nonstop, a 24-hour news and lifestyle network, was gathered. The studios were backed by the newsroom, and contained a small interview area and weather center, as well as a large plasma screen display; for morning newscasts, when the newsroom wasn't as busy, a frosted glass divider was put up behind the desk.

In 2012, the decision was made to move the production of news out of the cramped 7E and into Studio 3C, where NBC Nightly News was based from 1999 until 2011. The "content center" remains in 7E, but is no longer used regularly on-air. A new set was constructed there, with a weather center, interview area, and monitors behind the anchors that provide a camera feed of either the Manhattan skyline as seen from the "Top of the Rock", or the courtyard area in Rockefeller Center.

WNBC is currently working on moving to a new set In Studio 3K which is a bit larger & which was completed on October 9, 2016.