Day 19 in New York

Friday was our last day in New York. We spent the morning doing last minute things and then in the afternoon we headed to Rockefeller Tower for our NBC Studio Tour. On this tour we got to see the cast of Saturday Night Live rehearsing a skit for the next show. We also got to see how the makeup is done for these skits. We saw the broadcasting room, where if NBC loose power in the event of a blackout, their back-up generators can run for 2 weeks before they need to worry about going off air! Before the tour ended, they took us into the room where they film the Today show. Since changing over to HD, the studio now has to be kept spotless because otherwise even the smallest amount of dust can be picked up. Because of this, all the furniture was covered but you could still see most of the set. Also because of HD, they can now no longer 'sponge' makeup on the news readers, etc, because it now shows up on screen. Now, everything has to be airbrushed. Same with the flowers in the room, these have to be real as HD picks up if they are fake. And last but not least, when they converted everything to HD in 2007, they spent $25 million doing this, with a big portion of that going towards the lighting because again, HD is very sensitive and with the wrong lighting, shadow on a male can look like he has bruising on his face, and women look like they have major facial hair. Seriously, why even bother with HD?! Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any photos on the tour so I can't show you any of this.

NBC Studio Tour Ticket. No photos allowed

After the tour we met up with one of the Melbourne guys we met in DC and hung out in Times Square for a little while before saying goodbye and heading off to our evening plans of finally seeing the Facebook movie, The Social Network. On our way back to our hostel, we finally got to visit the bronze bull near Wall Street while there were hardly any tourists around and I finally got my photo of me kicking the bull (as promised T!).

Kicking the bronze bull!