By the late 1930's,
RCA engineers had developed reasonably satisfactory techniques for recording and
reproducing electrical transcriptions. A set of turntables was moved into studio
C so that phonograph recordings and pre-recorded commercials could be used in
local broadcasts. NBC policy still restricted the use of transcribed material
within network broadcasts. The studio was thus used primarily for the local broadcasts
of WMAQ.
[Thanks to the clout of James C. Petrillo, czar of the Chicago-based American
Federation of Musicians, jurisdiction over turntables was given to members of
the musicians' union (the theory was that the turntables were taking the jobs
of live musicians). A number of musicians too old to tootle or fiddle (along with
relatives of Petrillo) were given jobs as turntable operators. This was the common
practice at all Chicago's larger broadcast facilities. Only in the late 1960's
was the AFM stranglehold broken at NBC.]
The decline of network radio, the departure in the mid-1950's of ABC (which had
leased studio space from NBC after the divestiture of the Blue Network in 1942)
and the predominance of the "disk jockey" format left NBC with more
radio studios in the Merchandise Mart than it needed. Some were converted into
office space. Studio C was initially transformed into a television technical maintenance
area. In the 1980's it became a lounge where television engineers (and anyone
else who felt fatigued) could take naps. For a brief period when ENG facilities
elsewhere on the 19th floor were under renovation, it became a news editing room.
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