Window on the World: A Look Back at TODAY’s First Broadcast From Studio 1A

Here are the behind-the-scenes moments you didn’t see on TV.

To celebrate the 70th birthday of the TODAY show, we’re taking a look back at some of my favorite memories from the groundbreaking show. I wrote the below material for my memoir, Going There, but had to cut it because, let’s face it, the book was long enough! But here’s a little TODAY show history I’m almost certain you’ve never heard before.


Sigourney Weaver’s father, Pat, was a visionary. When he became President of NBC in 1949, he wanted to take advantage of new satellite technology that could bring the world into living rooms everywhere. The idea was to make the TV set an electronic guest that never left — someone you woke up with and dozed off with at night. 

       The after-hours program would be called The Tonight Show. For Weaver’s daybreak offering, he thought about the name Rise and Shine. But his wife nixed that and said, “How about Today?” In addition to recruiting the talented Dave Garroway (who noted, “I was built to do this show — all my training had been as a generalist, to specialize in nothing and know something about everything”), it was destined to be a huge moneymaker for the network.  

     Weaver was as commercially savvy as he was high-brow: Along with insisting that all NBC programming contain at least one cultural reference, he came up with the lucrative, game-changing idea of selling smaller ad units (e.g., one-minute commercials), rather than have a single sponsor underwrite an entire program (like the Texaco Star Theater featuring Milton Berle). Another stroke of genius was broadcasting TODAY from the corner of 49th Street, just across Rockefeller Plaza. The show was pumped out on loudspeakers to passersby who’d stop in their tracks to peer into the studio, essentially becoming part of the show, to the amusement of home viewers.  

Steve Friedman, who’d overseen TODAY during a successful run in the eighties, came back for a year in 1993 while Jeff Zucker produced Tom’s and my magazine show Now. I wasn’t that excited about it. He was such a guy’s guy, the kind who put his feet up on his desk and slapped his palm with a baseball bat during meetings — a bro before bros were a thing. But he also had a sweet side, and he was gutsy and took chances. When John Lennon was killed, long before I got there, Steve tore up the rundown and devoted the entire first half-hour to the story, complete with live remotes from the Dakota where he’d been shot by lunatic fan Mark Chapman — I can still remember being transfixed by the broadcast in Wendy’s basement bedroom at our place in Georgetown. 

     Now Steve had the brilliant idea to resurrect Pat Weaver’s “window on the world” concept. It took $15M to convert the defunct Bank Leumi on the corner into slick glass-walled studio 1A, drawing fans like moths to a flame — Midwestern tourists, Louisiana high school students on a field trip in the big city, housewives, newlyweds, middle-aged college buddies enjoying a reunion — everyone cheering, holding signs, friends and family at home seeing them on TV…such a genius ransacking of the fourth wall.

     On the first day, against an aerial view of the Rockefeller Center skyline, then a giant overhead “jib” shot of the plaza, Bryant opened the show lyrically: 

 “Good morning. You’re looking down on Midtown Manhattan in New York City — a global center of commerce, communication, fashion, and the arts. More than a million people move through Midtown on a daily basis. Made up of towering highrises, the area boasts one of the world’s great skylines. A man-made masterpiece of concrete, steel and glass. At its hub is Rockefeller Center where, ground-level, we’ve found ourselves a new home. A window on the world for which we proudly begin a new chapter in morning television, Monday June 20th 1994.”   

With hundreds of people packed onto the plaza, the mood was giddy — Bryant was giddy, which wasn’t something you saw everyday. How weird that we’d also be checking in with Los Angeles DA Gil Garcetti that day about OJ Simpson — the white Bronco chase, watched by 95 million people, had happened just  three days before, the grisly murder five days before that. Bryant also interviewed President Clinton, who took questions from viewers via digital “kiosks” on the plaza. A laudable attempt at audience interaction eons before social media, but alas, the contraptions, which looked like ATM machines, were a short-lived “innovation.”

     Still, it was pretty exciting: There was a viewer from Senegal on the plaza; another hailed from across the pond. Yet another appeared to have come from the coast of Maine…

     A few weeks earlier, we’d taken the show on the road, broadcasting live from the Ritz Carlton in Boston. We did a cooking segment with the chef of the popular North End restaurant The Daily Catch. He was making Lobster Fra Diavolo — the key ingredient, not surprisingly, being lobster: The chef picked up an unsuspecting live one resting on a plate and casually ripped off its claws, then severed its tail with one clean blow of the cleaver. I shielded my eyes as he then performed a vivisection on live TV, sliding a knife under the shell to free the meat, then chopping the carapace in half and dropping it into a skillet of hot oil as the legs undulated in what seemed like pain.  

     “What a way to go,” I said. I enjoy getting down with a lobster and some serious drawn butter as much as the next guy, but OMG…it was a lot to take in.  

     PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals— was not amused, threatening to sue the restaurant, generating headlines:                                                                                                                                                          “From TODAY Show Frying Pan to Animal Right Firestorm” said the AP; “Activists See Red After Lobster Tale”, crowed USA Today. Rush Limbaugh, my biggest fan, replayed the clip adding sound effects of the creature yelping with every torturous step in his cruel demise.

    After a few days, we’d thought the controversy had died down, but that first day on the plaza, our stage manager, Mark Traub, spied a woman on the verge of storming the set; he cornered her, spun her around, and called security. It turned out that was just a diversionary tactic: Next, someone in a giant lobster costume ambled toward center stage. Somehow our cameras managed to (mostly) shoot around the livid langoustine (although in retrospect, that would have been pretty good TV). Our outdoor studio was full of surprises — like the morning in 2000 when a braless woman opened her top and flashed the nation. Matt and Ann didn’t see her, but I did — I was on-camera at the Republican National Convention in Philly, seen covering my mouth in semi-horror. 

     Jay, meanwhile, was very worried about security, and not for nothing:  New York City in the nineties was a different place, with murder rates and robberies sky-high; a few weeks after the studio debuted, a 33-year-old stagehand was fatally shot in the back by a man who’d hidden an AK-47 under his raincoat. The same man who’d attacked Dan Rather in ‘86 on Park Avenue while quoting the REM lyric, Kenneth, what’s the frequency? — apparently suffering paranoid delusions about the media. Not that it would help when we were out on the plaza, but the windows were replaced with bulletproof glass. Security guards were always just off-camera in a defensive crouch, ready to pounce.

It may have been Steve’s idea to bring back the Window of the World, but Jeff Zucker took it to the next level, launching the summer concert series. Soon, thousands were packing the place, Madison Square Garden-style — fans lining up in the wee hours for prime position to see Earth, Wind and Fire, U2, Prince, Sting, Smokey Robinson, Neil Diamond, the Monkees, Maroon 5 (I met Adam Levine’s mom), and yes, REM… You can imagine the serious Mommy cred I earned bringing Ellie and Carrie to see Hillary Duff, Destiny’s Child, and Britney Spears perform, and get pictures with all of them. Sometimes when I announced an act, I was hoisted above the plaza in a crane (careful not to wear a skirt on those days), making me feel a bit like Eva Peron.

      That plaza saw it all, and we did it all: I sang with Bette Middler, I danced with Patrick Swayze, James Brown and Madonna stopped by. We created obstacle courses, climbing walls, a simulated Olympic ski slope, a state fair, a circus, fashion shows, a wedding chapel where a couple actually got married.

     Studio 1A quickly achieved iconic status — you know you’re doing something right when David Letterman turns it into a bit:  One day he showed up on the plaza holding up a sign that said “I love you, Bryant” (Bryant responded with a sign that said “Bite me!!!”). A Family Guy episode had Peter trying to get my attention by throwing a chair through the studio window, and animated me barking “What?”