TV Studio Tour

Of the commercial TV networks, only NBC Studios in Burbank offers the public a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of its television operation.

ABC TV doesn’t offer a guided tour of their studio. Neither does CBS, nor even Fox. In fact, if you want to see the inside of a TV studio, your only other choice is over at KCET – the local public television (PBS) station, Channel 28, which offers a free guided tour of its historic Monogram Studios.

The studio tour at NBC isn’t free, but it is reasonably priced when compared with the cost of the tours provided by the local motion picture studios. NBC’s $7.50 admission charge seems Like a bargain compared with the $36 charged by Universal Studios or the $30 charged by nearby Warner Brothers. It also beats the $15 price of the Paramount Studios tour.

The NBC tour is a modest one, though. You’ll find no audio animatronic sharks snapping at your heels here, no 50-foot apes or flying DeLorean’s. Unlike Universal, the NBC Studio tour is not a theme park in disguise.

And unlike the Warner Bros tour, there are no mini trams or giant back lots to explore. It’s just a 70-minute, indoor walking tour, offering a down-to-earth view of a working television studio.

Their guided studio tour gives you a chance to go where TV history was made; it takes you deep inside the NBC studio. The tour shows you the vast warehouse areas where props are stored, and construction, areas where craftsmen are hard at work building realistic sets, it shows you examples of special-effects hardware, and gives you a peek at the NBC wardrobe department.

The tour leads you through the studio’s labyrinth of hallways, past the makeup department, through the Peacock Store, and out into the parking lot where Jay Leno and other celebrities park their cars. You even get a glimpse of the infamous NBC commissary.

Then it’s up to Studio Three, the set where the “Tonight Show” is taped. (Jay Leno moved the show to this building in 1994, from the historic Studio One where Johnny Carson taped his shows.) There, tour guests get to sit in the same seats as the “Tonight Show” studio audience and see that famous, familiar “Tonight Show” set up-dose.

The tour shows you videos about. NBC’s history, gives you demonstrations of sound-effects machines, and explains bow such TV effects as ‘Chroma key’ is brought to life. You might even bump into a minor celebrity along the way. And they accomplish all of this in less than 90 minutes. lt’s a polished, professional little tour which probably satisfies most tourists’ urge for a behind-the-scenes glimpse of some aspect of Hollywood.

The problem is that the NBC tour is just a little too slick. In fact, it’s superficial – bordering on condescending. Tour guests don’t actually visit the wardrobe department, for instance, they just walk past it, and look at mannequins in a picture window. Tour guests don’t get to see the actual makeup or special-effects departments in action, instead they are merely shown simple display cases filled with related props. The tour guide points to the NBC commissary from afar, but they won’t let you actually go inside that well-known cafeteria. When they take visitors out to the studio parking lot, they actually expect us to be impressed by the oil stain left by Jay Leno’s car.

You get the feeling that someone in charge thinks the tour guests have just fallen off the turnip truck. ‘When soap opera actress Deidre Hall (from “Days of Our Lives”) “accidentally” walks by and waves hello, you’re supposed to believe that it was a blissful coincidence. When they demonstrate the well-known blue-screen process (by making a volunteer “fly” in a Superman cape against a blue background) we are supposed to be dazzled by 20-year-old video technology that in this day of borne computers and videocams is old hat to just about everyone taking the tour.

Guests are “treated like tourists” in the worst sense of that term. The well-groomed tour guides are friendly and polite, but you are always aware that, as a visitor, you are being kept on a very tight leash.

Here are ten of my favorite ways to manage information:

A. Factor reference from action. Carve out action items, To Dos, and tasks from your incoming streams of information. If it’s not an action, it’s reference. I first learned this practice when l was dealing with information overload as a support engineer. I ended up cementing the idea while working on our Microsoft Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base is a vast collection of information, where each article tends to be optimized around either action or reference.

B. Create lists. Make a new To Do list each day and use it to organize your key action items for the day. Create checklists for your common routines.

C. Create collections. Put things into collections or think in terms of collections. Consolidate your notes into a single collection that you access quickly, such as in a personal notebook, a Word document or etc. Consolidate your thoughts or ideas into a single collection. Consolidate reference examples of your heroes or stories you can use for inspiration. Consolidate your “ah-has” into a single collection. Note that by single collection, I don’t mean you have it all in a single document, although you can. Instead, I’m thinking of collections of items, much like a photo album music collection. By stashing things of a similar type, such as “idea” or “note” … etc., you can determine the best way to arrange that collection. Maybe it’s a simple A -Z list or maybe you arrange it by time. For example, when l keep a journal of my insights, and each time I get an “ah ha”, I write it down under the current date. This way I can easily flip back through days and see my insights in chronological order. While I could arrange them A – Z, I like having my most recent ideas or inspirations bubbled to the top, since chances are I’m finding ways to act on them.

D. Put things where you look for them. Where ever you look for it, that’s where it should be. If you keep looking for something in a certain place, either just put it there when you find it or add some sort of pointer to the actual location. While you might logically think something belongs in a certain place, the real test is where you intuitively look for it.

E. Keep things flat. Out of sight, out of mind bolds true for information. Avoid nesting information. Keep it flat and simple where you can. Think in terms of iTunes or a playlist. A well-organized playlist is easy to jump to what you need.

F. Organize long lists or folders using A-Z. When you have long lists or big collections, then listing things A-Z tends to be a simple way to store things and to look things up fast Once a list gets long, A-Z or a numbered list is the way to go.

G. Archive old things. When information is no longer useful for you, consider archiving it to get it out of your way. This usually means having a separate location. I’m a pack rat and l have a hard time letting things go, so I tend to archive instead. It lets me get things out of the way, and then eventually get rid of them if I need to. Archiving has really helped me get a ton of information out of my way, since I know I can easily rehydrate it if I need to.

H. Bubble up key things to the top. When you have a lot of information, rather than worry about organizing all of it, bubble up things to the top. You can effectively have a quick, simple list or key things up top, followed by more information. Keep the things up front simple. This way you get the benefits of both exhaustive or complete, as well as simple. Whenever you have a large body of information, just add a simple entry point or key take away or summary up from.

I. Know whether you’re optimizing for storing or retrieving. Distinguish whether you are storing something because you will need to look it up or refer to it a lot, or if you are simply storing it because you might need it in the future. For information that l need to look up a lot, I create a view or I make it easy to get to the information fast. For example, I might use a sticky note since I can quickly put it wherever I need to. For a lot of information, you simply need a quick way to store it. What you don’t want to do is have to work too hard, each time you need to file a piece of information. This is where having a place for things, using lists, and organizing information in a meaningful way comes in handy. For most of my reference information, I organize it either by A-Z or by time. This way I don’t have to think too hard. I don’t create a bunch of folders for my email. Instead, l just store it all flat so it’s easy to search or browse or sort. For example, if I need to find an email from somebody, I simply sort my email by their name. Just by asking the question whether you’re optimizing for fast filing or for fast lookup will get you improving your information management in the right direction.

J. Create views. Create views for the information that you need to frequently access. For example, you might put sticky notes of information that consolidate just the key things. As an analogy, think of your music store versus your playlists. You store might be a large collection organized A-Z, but your playlists are views that are more focused or have themes. You can apply this metaphor to any of your information collections.