Canadian Broadcasting Centre

Canadian Broadcasting Centre
General information
Address	250 Front Street West
Town or city	Toronto, ON M5V 3G5
Country	Canada
Construction started	1988
Completed	1992
Technical details
Floor count	13
Floor area	1,720,000 square feet (160,000 m2)
Design and construction
Owner	Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Architect	Philip Johnson
Architecture firm	John Burgee Architects (design), Bregman + Hamann Architects (production)
Structural engineer	Quinn Dressel Associates
Other designers	Barton Myers (Development/Design Guidelines and Outline Specifications) (1985)

The Canadian Broadcasting Centre, located in Toronto, Ontario, is the broadcast headquarters and master control point for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's English-language television and radio services. It also contains studios for local and regional French language productions and is also home to the North American Broadcasters Association.

The Canadian Broadcasting Centre is located at 250 Front Street West in Downtown Toronto, directly across the street from the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. It is within walking distance of Union Station, the Rogers Centre, and the CN Tower. It is also connected to the city's PATH underground pathway system.

History[edit]

The thirteen-storey complex is partly located on the site of the First Ontario Parliament Buildings, which stood on the block bounded by Wellington, John, Front, and Simcoe streets between 1832 and 1903. Constructed at a cost of $350 million, the Canadian Broadcasting Centre opened in 1993 and was designed in order to accommodate CBC employees who were housed at various buildings throughout downtown Toronto at the time. The building required over twelve years of planning and another four years of construction. Television production is located on the upper floors (with many programs recorded in the three rooftop studios), and radio on the second and third floors. Some of the larger sound stages are rented out to outside movie and television productions, such as Global's Canadian versions of Deal or No Deal and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?. The building sits on 3,000 rubber pads to reduce unwanted noise and vibrations. It is for that reason that all of the studios are located in the core of the building.^[1] The building also has four 1250-kilowatt Cummins generators to provide power to critical loads during a power failure. The atrium was named for Barbara Frum, a noted Canadian journalist. It is used as the venue for special broadcasts, including federal election coverage and the CBC 2000 Today millennium special, as well as episodes of Canadian Antiques Roadshow.

The building contains 3 radio studios (including the Glenn Gould Theatre), 19 radio production studios, 3 television studios, 2 local television studios, 2 all purpose studios, and one national news studio.

The CBC Museum, which is dedicated to preserving the memories and physical artifacts of the national broadcaster's heritage, is located on the first floor of the building. As of 2010 exhibits include the original "Tickle Trunk" from Mr. Dressup (Casey's treehouse from the same series is on display in the lobby just outside the entrance to the museum), a portion of the original set used for Friendly Giant, Muppets puppets from Sesame Park, video clips from numerous programs, and original sound and tape equipment. Additional exhibits of memorabilia from CBC's history are also located in other areas of the first floor.

The analogous facility for CBC's French-language networks is Maison Radio-Canada in Montreal. The CBC's corporate headquarters are located in Ottawa in the CBC Ottawa Broadcast Centre.

Television studios[edit]

The roof of the Broadcasting Centre, as seen from the CN Tower. Studio 40 is centre, flanked by studios 41 and 42.

• Studio 40 - 13,287 square feet (1234 m²) - Located on the 10th floor of the building, with a ceiling height of 60 feet, this studio is described by CBC as "the largest purpose built multi-camera capable studio soundstage in Canada."^[2] Productions filmed in this studio include Deal or No Deal Canada.
• Studios 41 and 42 - 11,070 square feet (1024 m²) each - Also on the 10th floor, these two studios are almost identical, and have been used by many of CBC's comedy programs, including Air Farce Live, Rick Mercer Report, The Ron James Show and The Red Green Show. Studio 42 is also the home of Hockey Night in Canada.
• Studios 43 and 65 - 4,345 square feet (404 m²) each - Located on the 6th floor, these smaller studios have been used for CBC's talk show and lifestyle programming, including George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight and Steven and Chris. The classic children's television show Mr. Dressup was taped in Studio 65.
• Studio 50 - size unknown - This is CBC's national news studio, and, appropriately, home to The National.
• Studio 73 - 1,386 square feet (129 m²) - Located on the 5th floor, this studio is equipped with a large green screen, and is used to tape the hosted segments of Kids' CBC, among others.

References[edit]

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Canadian Broadcasting Centre

• Glenn Gould Studio

Coordinates: 43°38′41″N 79°23′17″W / 43.644833°N 79.388194°W / 43.644833; -79.388194