text: The show was originally produced at the 30 Rockefeller Plaza NBC television studios in New York City, with occasional stints in California. The program began videotaping in advance during the Jack Paar days, although during the 1970s, NBC fed the live taping from Burbank to New York via satellite for editing (see below). Carson had a talent for quick quips to deal with problems. If the opening monologue fared poorly, the band would start playing "Tea for Two" and Carson danced a softshoe to laughs from the studio audience. Alternatively, Carson might pull the boom microphone close to his face and announce, "Attention K-Mart shoppers, clean up in aisle four!"
  Move to Burbank
  On May 1, 1972, the show moved from 30 Rockefeller Plaza to the NBC Studios in  Burbank, California, because of the studio's proximity to celebrities.
  From 1980, Carson stopped hosting five shows per week. Instead, Mondays featured a guest host, leaving Carson to host the other four weeknights. Shows were videotaped in Burbank at 5:30 pm, fed from there to the Central and Eastern time zone stations via cross-country television line at 8:30 pm Pacific time (11:30 pm Eastern time), and later sent from Burbank to the Pacific time zone stations at 11:30 pm Pacific time. Since only two feeds originated from Burbank, Central time zone stations received the Eastern feed one hour earlier at 10:30 pm local time, and Mountain time stations received the Pacific time zone feed also one hour later, at 12:30 am local time.