KDKA-AM completes studio move

KDKA-AM has moved from its Downtown home of more than 50 years, leaving One Gateway Center for a studio in Green Tree.

The move, completed Nov. 12, consolidates all four of CBS Radio's Pittsburgh stations at Foster Plaza, home to the station's business staff for about 10 years.

KDKA broadcasters have a modern studio close enough to collaborate with marketing and sales teams and other CBS stations, said Michael Young, senior vice president and Pittsburgh market manager for CBS Radio.

"(Gateway Center) was built for the 1950s," said Marshall Adams, program director. "There wasn't a lot of visibility between the hosts and news anchors and producers. There weren't a lot of windows, and that was one of the things we wanted to change with this layout. It's sort of a glass-enclosed nerve center, so to speak."

KDKA-AM became the world's first commercial station on Nov. 2, 1920, and joined Pittsburgh's renaissance by moving to Downtown -- becoming an original tenant in One Gateway Center when it opened. But most of Pittsburgh's radio and television stations now are near the city limits, not Downtown.

KDKA's move mirrors that trend, said Ed Salamon, author of "Pittsburgh's Golden Age of Radio," released in March.

"When I was back there in the past year to do interviews in conjunction with my book, I was surprised at how much the same everything looked," said Salamon, who worked at KDKA from 1970-73 to help promote its 50th anniversary in 1970. "They added more studios and reconfigured things slightly, but the separation of the business offices and the studios were the same as they had been in 1970."

Station owners signed a short-term lease about five years ago to start planning for the move, said Gary Horwitz, president of Hertz Investment Group, which owns Gateway Center.

With the advance notice, Hertz has leased about half of the vacated space, he said. Pittsburgh has the strongest rental market in the California-based company's 12 markets, including St. Louis, Columbus and New Orleans, said Horwitz.