It was an exciting day to be an NCC radio/TV major! Forty History of Broadcasting students recently got an opportunity to catch a behind-the-scenes peek at the inner workings of Guiding Light , the longest-running soap opera (uh, make that daytime drama)  in history.

On April 10, the students plus Associate Professor Donna Acerra boarded a Bieber bus for a trip to the CBS Broadcast Center in Manhattan, where Guiding Light has its production offices and films the interior shots for the show’s 252 episodes a year. The tour was arranged through Acerra’s friend Lou Grieci, director of production services for the show.

Acerra has been taking her History of Broadcasting students on a field trip to the city for as long as she can remember. In years past, the trip included a stop at the Museum of Television and Broadcasting, where students took a two-hour class on some aspect of broadcast history, and a tour of NBC Studios. But about six years ago, a student whose boyfriend was interning at Guiding Light introduced Acerra to Grieci, who arranged the first GL tour. Grieci has been kind enough to invite Acerra and her class back for a yearly tour ever since.

“The students like the tour better than sitting in a museum class,” Acerra says. “They get a chance to see the way a real show works, and ask questions from people who are actually in the business.”

GL Producer Janet Morrison, the class’s guide for the day, began by explaining that Guiding Light, in its current production format, is unlike any other show on television. In response to viewers who “hated fake trees and fake cars,” and in an effort to give the show a more current, realistic feel, GL turned its more than 50-year-old production model – sets, cameras, editing and post-production – on its head on February 29, 2008.

Gone are the three-wall sets typical of television, with lights and wires exposed in an open ceiling. Now the sets have four walls and a ceiling, and look more like the rooms in someone’s home or office. The show went from eight temporary sets to 40 permanent ones, most of which double as office and work space for the production staff. This was made possible only by changing how the show is filmed, from huge, bulky pedestal cameras that couldn’t move from the sets, to three hand-held wireless digital cameras that can shoot the actors from a 360-degree perspective.

The change also allowed production to move outside. “Now when you see characters in a car, they’re really in a car,” Morrison explained. The show has “adopted” the New Jersey town of Peapack for all their exterior shots, and built a house there that has four different entrance facades for four different story lines. The day the NCC students toured the studios, all of the cast and much of the production crew were filming exteriors in Peapack. “We used to film outside only once or twice a year,” Morrison said, “but now we’re out in Peapack about 20 percent of the time.”

Students enjoyed touring the show’s hair, make-up and wardrobe facilities, as well as studio sets, which included a courtroom, police station, jail cells, hospital, enclosed shopping mall, upscale bar (pictured above), restaurant, hotel room, and several characters’ homes. They were amused to see the non-studio sets that double as offices for production staff. Morrison’s own office, pictured at right, doubles as the office of Lewis Construction on the show. “When they need to film here, I just grab my stuff and move out,” Morrison laughed.

Other “double-duty” sets/offices include a nail salon, chapel, cabin, luxury hotel room, seedy motel room, and upscale corporate offices. When the sets aren’t being used for filming, production staff are accommodated in some unique ways. The nail salon set’s manicure table, for instance, has a removable desktop that provides workspace for the producer who sits there. The luxury hotel room’s queen-size bed folds up into an elegant Murphy-bed cabinet when it’s being used as an office (pictured left). The person who occupies the seedy motel room as her office space has to look at a bare-mattressed rollaway every day, unfortunately.

After the tour, Morrison and GL Production Coordinator Jessie Flores answered the students’ impressive technical questions about equipment, editing software platforms, and media storage. There was also plenty of practical advice about internships and jobs within the television industry.

R/TV majors Chantelle Gendron and Chris Weite thought the tour was great. “It was interesting learning about the internship opportunities in television,” Gendron said.

“I might send them my resume!” Weite laughed.

“I learned a lot,” said NCC student Scott “Bear” Alliston, who found the details of GL’s changes in filming particularly fascinating.

After the tour, students had some free time to enjoy the sunny, 70-plus degree day as they explored the city on their own for a few hours. Several students opted to sit in the studio audience for the taping of a BET show, which has studio space in the CBS Broadcast Center.