NBC Studios leaving "beautiful downtown Burbank"

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After more than 50 years of broadcasting from the Los Angeles suburb that became satirically known to the world as "beautiful downtown Burbank," NBC will soon be moving across the freeway to a new address.

The West Coast operations of the television network, which merged with Vivendi Universal Entertainment in the formation of NBC Universal in 2004, will be relocated to state-of-the-art facilities at Universal Studios over the next four years, the company said on Thursday.

The move marks the end of an era for the NBC Studio in Burbank, which has been the permanent home for "The Tonight Show" since 1972, when Johnny Carson was host, and was used by Elvis Presley to tape his 1968 holiday TV special.

It also was the site of such iconic programs as "Hollywood Squares," "To Tell the Truth" and "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In," which announcer Gary Owens introduced as coming to viewers from "beautiful downtown Burbank."

That line, a reference to the decidedly unglamorous location of the studio, become a popular catchphrase that helped forever associate Burbank in the mind of the public as a kind of poor cousin to Hollywood.

NBC is putting most of the 34-acre Burbank property it has occupied since 1952 up for immediate sale, but will lease back the space it uses for "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," its news bureau and other operations until the new facilities are ready, spokeswoman Hilary Smith said.

Plans are under way to renovate and expand Universal's landmark Stage One, where "The Jack Benny Show" was filmed in the 1960s, to make room for "The Tonight Show" in 2009, when Conan O'Brien is slated to take over as host from Leno.

In addition, NBC Universal plans to build a new "green," high-tech West Coast digital broadcast center that will house the network's Los Angeles news bureau, local stations KNBC and KVEA and syndicated celebrity news show "Access Hollywood."

The West Coast News Headquarters and Content Center will anchor a sprawling new commercial complex proposed for an existing subway station across the street from Universal Studios.

"The company has decided we want everybody to be in one location," Smith said. "We want to centralize our business, and we want to upgrade and expand our businesses and make them state of the art and competitive in the digital age."

Announcement of the West Coast move comes as the company cuts the ribbon in New York City for its new NBC News World Headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, where the "NBC Nightly News," "Dateline NBC," the "Today" show, MSNBC and MSNBC.com will be relocated. That facility opens later this month.

NBC Universal is 80 percent owned by General Electric Co .