Wrgb Channel 6

This isn’t a review of the TV station; it’s a review of the building, which is actually historic (a fact unbeknownst to most), as a local history geek, there being no other source about this place, I feel obliged to fill in some blanks here for those on the unlikely quest to complete a tour of broadcast history and/​or local Niskayuna landmarks.
The somewhat unremarkable building you’re looking at was built in 1957 as the second permanent home of WGY, the first commercial radio station anywhere, and WGY-​WGRB, the first regular commercial television station, ever. General Electric basically invented the modern television system, and created the first «network» with NBC, of which WGY/​WGRB were the second of two stations (the others being in New York City; you can’t have a network without at least two outlets!)
The building was built as a state-​of-​the-​art «experimental» facility, as part of GE’s research into television technology, where many new technologies developed by GE were tried out for the first time in the commercial context. These include things we take for granted, such as network relays (originally via microwave, later by satellite), remote reporting trucks, network simulcasts, and a very early version of cable TV broadcasting.
It’s in Niskayuna largely because of one person, important to broadcast history but who’s mostly obscure, named Willard «Bill» Purcell. Bill was not college-​educated, but an incredible auto-​didact who constructed radio sets at home at the age of ten and later, at the age of 17, was the first battleship-​based radio operator in the US Navy. He came after WWI to Schenectady and was involved in nearly every early engineering milestone for WGY before venturing into television. At the end of his career with GE, he helped design and supervised the construction of the studio building in Niskayuna (he lived nearby on Van Antwerp road, so the oddity of a TV station in what was then a little cottage suburb attached to a farming community was largely his doing) before retiring in 1960. The Purcells also owned the fourth television set, ever, and ran a variety of experiments from their Niskayuna home.
The station itself got its call letters from Dr. W. R. G. Baker, who was GE’s Vice President for telecommunications from the early 1940’s, who was among the pioneers in setting broadcast standards that made commercial TV possible.
There aren’t tours of the building available, from what I hear it’s been gutted many times over the years, WRGB isn’t an NBC affiliate or owned by GE anymore, and the WRGB employees I’ve talked to seem largely ignorant of the station and this building’s place in broadcast (and industrial history). But if you want to pick a place where the modern broadcast TV station was invented (now itself almost a relic of the past), this is it.

If you’ve dropped an egg on the floor or run over a squirrel or lost a sock in the dryer or read the New York Post or had an inexplicable rash or said something you wish you hadn’t you’ve probably had an experience better than watching the news on WRGB.