CBS News Chicago revitalizes its corner of the city with studio overhaul

CBS News Chicago recently moved back into Studio A, bringing its newscasts out from behind traditional studio walls to create a showcase for the station in the heart of downtown.

It’s a piece of real estate that Jennifer Lyons, the station’s president and general manager, had her eye on as a way to bring the station closer to viewers. (Lyons joined CBS-owned WBBM in 2021 from NewsNation and WGN.)

Set Design

WBBM

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“When I came on board, I wanted to make a difference in the community, and I wanted interaction — and I wanted to be part of the downtown area,” said Lyons. “I wanted to build out that space and bring that corner back to life.”

Initially, plans called for converting the space into a weather center with windows.

“As we started talking about the project, there was a natural evolution,” said Lyons. “We got excited and kept building.”

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However, before the set could go in, the station had to mount an effort to revitalize the studio, which was first built two decades ago and had sat mostly vacant and unused since 2017 when the station moved production down the hall to Studio B.

There have obviously been significant advances in technology and broadcast engineering since the station last used Studio A as its home, and while upgrades had been done elsewhere in the broadcast center, the studio’s infrastructure remained largely the way it had when it was shuttered in 2017, said Tom Schnecke, director of operations and engineering. 

“We ended up going all the way back to see how the signal got in and out of the room,” said Schnecke.

First, a complete floor restoration took place in December 2023. Workers restored the epoxy floor, which sits on top of a spring-loaded platform designed to muffle the vibrations from the city subway lines just 40 feet below.

Next up was the grid restoration, which involved a full forklift upgrade from dimmers to relay racks for the new LED lighting, something that wasn’t used when the original set went in. Mystic Scenic Studios delivered scenery over two separate weekends in April 2024 to avoid heavy traffic and city rules about large commercial vehicles.

Once the set was installed, The Lighting Design Group came in to add its touch before rehearsals could start in May 2024. The station then rolled the robotic cameras from Studio B down the hall so rehearsals could begin. 

“We just wanted to get the timing right that everyone was comfortable with — and that ended up being on last Monday (July 8, 2024),” said Schnecke.

Both Schnecke and Lyons emphasized that bringing Studio A back online enabled the station to leverage a valuable resource — a space engineered and built as a TV studio, as opposed to being a converted storefront like many windowed broadcast spaces. It has a 30-foot ceiling, is connected to emergency power generators and is outfitted with a studio-grade HVAC system.

“It’s a television studio with two glass walls … we just had to tune it up,” said Schnecke.

The new set installed in Studio A closely mirrors the design language used at sister stations KCBS-KCAL in Los Angeles and KCNC in Denver, Colorado. These stations, in turn, share design elements with various spaces at CBS’s New York studios. Like those sets, it was designed by Jack Morton Worldwide.

A key theme in these designs are the use of vertical slats, an element that was first used at Studio 1515 in New York, which is home to “CBS Mornings.” It then popped up in the morning show’s old home, Studio 47, which became home to the CBS News 24/7 streamer.

Slatted elements have been created on various CBS sets using warm wood tones, metal bars and slivers of glass, sometimes with an oversized image emblazoned across the surface.

Those elements were integrated into the WBBM scenic design to emphasize that the station is an extension of the CBS News brand. 

WBBM ultimately didn’t feel “The Desk” concept used at KCBS–KCAL and KTVT in Texas, was right for the market, so there isn’t an in-studio assignment desk. The station maintained its flash cam position in the newsroom upstairs, however, and it also served as a temporary anchor location during the updates.

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Walls include columns with wood-toned vertical slats, metal arrays and backlit monochromatic printed graphics inspired by parts of the CBS eye logo. The station can shift colors on the backdrops, including gradients. In parts of the set headers that are not filled with LED panels, similar backlit panels separated with vertical accents are installed. 

Set Design

WBBM (2017-2024)

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Overall, the look is significantly warmer, using wood and other tones that Lyons said draw inspiration from the Midwest and City of Chicago. “We wanted to reflect our community and what is current in our community,” she said.

Special attention was also paid to orientating the set to give pedestrians peering in the windows a good view of the action while also maintaining sight lines to the anchor positions.

Unlike the previous set, WBBM opted to move the chroma key wall, which rolls up, closer to the windows to give passersby a better view at one of the most popular “magic tricks” of TV, said Schnecke.

Anchors can also interact with people outside the windows thanks to a push-to-talk microphone installed behind the anchor desk. Talent can pick up the mic and talk to people outside via outdoor speakers.

“People are coming up and they’re taking selfies with the anchors in the background and the anchors are talking to them,” said Lyons, whose office overlooks the same corner from higher up in the building.

Other parts of the studio were carefully designed around the station’s mission to provide better storytelling, including a trio of vertically-mounted pivoting panels that can be used for standups or from the far camera left anchor desk position for sports.

“All of it was done with the idea of ‘Where can the reporter standup positions be?’; ‘How can we use this space to effectively tell stories?” said Lyons. “That was always top of mind and why we landed where we landed.”

And the station is far from done — as the anchors and crew settle into the studio, viewers can expect to see the set shot in new and innovative ways, promised Schnecke.

In addition to the new set, WBBM tweaked its graphics package to add the four six-pointed stars from the City of Chicago flag. 

The station also introduced a new tagline and image campaign: “For the love of Chicago.” 

Studio A dates back to 2008, when WBBM moved out of its longtime building at McClurg Court into a structure dubbed the CBS Broadcast Center at the corner of Dearborn and Washington streets near Daley Plaza in the Loop. Part of the Block 37 development, WBBM initially leased about 100,000 square feet in the building, including the 3,500-square-foot ground-level Studio A.

In 2017, the station moved production of all its newscasts down the hall to Studio B on a windowless set, where it broadcast until the latest change. In 2019, the station emptied the space and attempted to sublease it but never closed a rental deal. 

Once plans to keep the space as part of the broadcast center came together, the station also invested in repairing the large outdoor screen above the studio, which allows the station to showcase live newscasts and breaking news. By default, it feeds the CBS News Chicago stream to the screen, including the streaming-only live newscasts. 

WBBM declined to reveal future plans for Studio B or the old set.

Project Credits

• Scenic design by Jack Morton Worldwide
• Fabrication by Mystic Scenic Studios
• Lighting design by The Lighting Design Group
• LED from Neoti