The Museum of Broadcast Communications lands a new downtown home
Sets up near the Ogilvie Center
After vacating their River North venue two years ago, the Museum of Broadcast Communications has found a new home.
According to the Sun-Times, the museum is moving to a “pop-up” location at 440 W. Randolph in the West Loop, just two blocks north of the Ogilvie Center, the terminus of several Metra lines, making the museum easily accessible to visitors.
“We found a great partner in wanting to bring the museum back to life in this location and breathe some life into Randolph and Canal,” MBC CEO David Pilar told the paper, stating the building’s landlord gave him a great offer.
Starting at a River City condo complex in 1987 and relocating shortly thereafter to the Chicago Cultural Center where it was until 2003, MBC moved into its River North home in June 2012 at the southwest corner of State and Kinzie, after a six-year delay due to construction issues as the project was being funded with $6 million worth of public money, leaving the project unfinished as the structure became an eyesore. After facing financial difficulties and low attendance, MBC sold the top two floors of its four-story building to the real estate firm Fern Hill in 2019 and exercised its option to purchase the remaining floors in April 2023.
Attendance woes continued for MBC as they were forced to shut down due to the pandemic in March 2020. MBC reopened in October 2021, but vacated the building with the sale to Fern Hill, as issues with violent crime in the area kept attendance down.
Since then, MBC has remained active by organizing online auctions, among other activities.
The first two exhibits in the new West Loop building, when it opens on October 24, are devoted to late-night television. One is dedicated to Johnny Carson, the “King of Late Night”, who held his Tonight Show throne for three decades. Titled A Johnny Carson Centennial, marking his 100th birthday, the exhibit features a replica of the original Tonight Show stage and portions of those famous curtains he went through every night. The Tonight Show was taped at New York’s Rockefeller Center until 1972, when it shifted to NBC’s Burbank, Calif., studio, where Carson hosted until his retirement in 1992.
Another is titled A Journey Through 75 Years Of Late Night, which explores the legendary hosts who graced the daypart, including Carson, Jack Paar, David Letterman, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, and Conan O’Brien. The exhibit plans to run until January 2027 when by that time, we may no longer have first-run, late-night programming as CBS canceled The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last month, and the future of Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon is also questionable, given that viewership and revenue in the daypart have declined significantly in the last decade.