The Tour at NBC Studios

Absolutely fascinating. The lighting rigs and management for the SNL studio looks like it is original 1930's, no clear investment in modern lighting and controls. The production control room gear looks like it pre-dates user experience research and design. The tour guides are yound apprentices on a 'page' (meadieval term for a knights apprentice) system. They apoeared unaware of how archaic a lot of the technology was - the IP phone sysyem in production rooms was cisco setvices circa 2000. The pages giving the tour called the group 'you guys' rather than the more gender neutral 'folks' group term. They use a mix of pre-technology solutions (prompt boards), ancient solutions (autocues) and there may be some high tech back end around audio and mixing, thier UI was profoundly atrocious. No photograohs allowed inside, not at all suprising. It looks like they moved in when weakthy in the 1930's and have persistently, cit running costs since then. Hence ancient business soecific technologies.

Our tour guide pages, Anthony and Julia, were a great team. We thoroughly enjoyed our tour!!! So cool to see the SNL studio and learn about the history of the Rockefeller building. Absolutely would recommend this tour for anyone interested in any NBC show!

This was such an amazing tour, our tour guides where very informative and knowledgeable. Unfortunately can't remember their names but we were on the 11:30 tour on Sunday the 2nd of Feb. It was good seeing behind the scenes of some of the best NBC live shows.

Really enjoyed our tour yesterday! As a big SNL fan it was so cool to see Studio 8H! Our pages Trent and Emily were very knowledgeable and very friendly!

So glad this has reopened since Covid. We had a fun time seeing the "behind the scenes" and the "pages" were so informative, friendly and professional! The employees in the gift shop were very nice and helpful. I recommend this as a must do when visiting NYC!

Had such a wonderful time on the NBC studio tour! Got to see the SNL studio and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon studio as well! The building is amazing, so beautiful. Sasha and Danny the pages who guided us were very friendly and informative.

Our pages Maya and Aiden were definitely our favorite part!! They knew so much but instantly we felt like a mini family. We had a lot of fun talking about trivia and our childhood experiences with SNL and talk shows. We loved making the video in the end too. I think the digital displays and movies we watched were a very nice touch. It adds to the experience, gives it some sparkle and glamour from the past. We loved the Margaret Bourke-White photographs decorating the walls. It was a great combo of past and present, analog and digital. It’s a great lesson on needing to keep a tactile, person made experience in order to make television and film relatable and more enjoyable. We loved it and it definitely exceeded our expectations. We toured on a Sunday and learned that there were areas we could see because it wasn’t a weekday. We will also try a week day to see some people working too. But the weekend vibe was really nice.

Cool tour to learn backstage views of your favorite shows