Once the epicenter of CBS’ productions, the storied Television City Studios complex known for producing “The Price is Right,” “The Carol Burnett Show” and “All in the Family” has a new anchor tenant.
In a move announced last week, virtual production company Orbital Studios has set up shop at the 25-acre Fairfax production hub.
This comes as the facility faces a forced sale after owner Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on its mortgage. Orbital, founded in 2020 and previously based in a converted downtown warehouse, is bringing to Television City an increasingly popular filming technique that uses high-resolution LED screens to create realistic scene backgrounds.
“(Television City) had a different mindset when it was CBS, and it’s time that we helped bring it into the future,” said Orbital’s founder and chief executive, A.J. Wedding, who described the company’s aim to make it cheaper to shoot locally. “People are starting to understand how to use (virtual production) and realizing that it is a pretty powerful tool, not just for production itself, but also for keeping production in Los Angeles.”
Orbital hopes to breathe new life into the complex with virtual production, a modernized version of the rear projection that lets filmmakers shoot moving car scenes without leaving the studio. The technology made its mainstream debut with the 2019 Star Wars spin-off series “The Mandalorian,” which several of Wedding’s team members worked on.
Cost-cutting innovation
As demand for virtual production has risen steadily, so has Orbital’s need for more parking and amenities, Wedding said. Last year, the company, whose recent credits include Netflix series “Nemesis” and the 20-part History Channel docuseries “World War II with Tom Hanks,” saw its revenue double and started looking for a new home.
Among a sea of available studios across town, Television City’s desirable location and well-maintained facilities were key draws, Wedding said.
“This is one of the oldest studios there is, but it’s so immaculate, it’s so well taken care of, and it just speaks to the team here at TVC,” he said.
As part of its partnership with Television City, Orbital is building a new “volume,” or specialized soundstage fitted with a curved LED screen used to mimic a dynamic background. It’s also introducing a host of tech-forward upgrades, including blue screen virtual production, used for nighttime and dark scenes, and three-dimensional scanning to create immersive scenery.
The company doubled its research and development team in light of the move, Wedding said.
“Our goal is to solve the problem that everyone’s trying to solve, which is: ‘How do we make these productions for less money?’” he said. “We have to figure out ways to make the virtual art department, which is what we put on the LED wall, faster and cheaper.”
The innovation Orbital is bringing to Fairfax will help keep Television City “iconic and essential,” said Anthony Mazziotti, the complex’s executive director of stage operations and marketing, in a news release.
“We could not be more excited to welcome Orbital Studios to Television City,” Mazziotti said. “Their work puts this lot among the most advanced production environments anywhere, while honoring everything these stages have stood for.”
A new wave
Television City, opened by CBS in 1952, was one of the first and largest complexes built for television production and broadcasting. Today, it houses nine soundstages totaling 100,000 square feet alongside production support and storage space.
After nearly 70 years of ownership, CBS sold the lot to Hackman, a Culver City-based real estate investment firm, for $750 million in 2018 as development picked up in Fairfax.
The network stayed on as a core tenant but gradually shifted production elsewhere as leases came up. “The Price Is Right” left for Glendale in 2023, and “The Bold and the Beautiful” moved to Sunset Las Palmas Studios last year, leaving “The Young and the Restless” as the only CBS show still made at Television City.
As CBS moved on and out, Television City brought on tenants embodying a new wave of content creation. A recent addition to the complex was Interwoven Studios, a production services company catering to social media creators and influencers that chose Television City for its fourth location last year.
The shift responds to a growing creator economy of podcast hosts, YouTubers, vloggers, brand ambassadors and the like looking to rent space and equipment to produce their web-native, short-form content.
“As a company, we are trying to think outside the box, literally and figuratively, and cater to the production that is here in L.A.,” said Zach Sokoloff, senior vice president of asset management at Hackman, in an interview with the Business Journal last August. “Part of the value proposition is taking content creators, folks who work in production, who are maybe looking for their big break, and giving them access to the services and the equipment and the facilities of a major studio.”
For Hackman, keeping up with the times means more than welcoming new blood. In 2021, the firm proposed a $1 billion plan to modernize and expand the complex to add roughly 1.6 million square feet of new development. The project, slated for completion in 2028, got the green light from L.A. City Council in January 2025.
Despite city approval, Hackman’s plan to transform the lot hangs in the balance as lenders mount pressure on the firm to sell the property. In a late-June notice default and election to sell under deed of trust, the Deutsche Bank-led lender group claimed Hackman owed $357 million. The consortium chose commercial real estate firm CBRE Group Inc. to shop the loan, The Real Deal reported.
Falling on hard times
Television City’s troubles follow a series of defaults and take-overs of Hackman-owned properties. Sluggish local production has devastated the firm, which went on a buying spree over the last decade to become the world’s largest independent owner and operator of studio facilities.
The portfolio Hackman built in its aggressive push to snatch up production lots hit hard times as the pandemic, writer and actor union strikes in 2023, and studio consolidation slumped sound stage occupancy. Studio use in L.A. hasn’t recovered from the sharp decline it saw three years ago, when average occupancy rates fell from 90% to 69%, according to a FilmLA report. Rates slipped to 62% in the first half of last year, down slightly from 63% in all of 2024.
“We have a couple deals that we just made mistakes on, and we’re going to lose a lot of money on those properties, but that happens,” said Michael Hackman, the investment firm’s founder and chief executive, during a June conference at the Lot at Formosa in West Hollywood. “We’ve accepted it, and now we’re moving on.”
Earlier this year, Hackman ceded ownership of Studio City’s 55-acre Radford Studio Center, formerly the CBS Studio Center, to lender Goldman Sachs Group Inc. after defaulting on a $1.1 billion mortgage. The lot is now up for grabs and could soon fall into Netflix’s hands for an estimated $400 million, the L.A. Times reported – a steep discount from the $2 billion Hackman paid in 2021.
