Location: New York, New York, USA
Address: 77 W 66th St
Date: June 2017
Website: kellyandryan.com
LIVE with Kelly & Ryan is a morning talk show filmed at ABC studios in New York City. The show has left the studio and travelled to Canada on three occassions. Back in 1996 the show filmed from Niagara Falls, Ontario and the hosts were Regis Philbin and Kathy Lee Gifford. In 2006, the show returned once more and this time Kelly Ripa joined Regis as a host. In 2017, the current hosts Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest filmed a pair of episodes and this time we were there. Ryan Seacrest has announced that he will be leaving the show so we found ourselves looking back.
We didn't actually have tickets to the show but we obtained ourselves a bird's eye view. We had a room at the Sheraton Fallsview Hotel which overlooks the Oakes Garden Theatre where the taping of the show was to take place.
The hotel also offers a great view to look across and admire the American and Horseshoe Falls.
As we looked down from our balcony, we had a perfect view of the stage below. The day before the taping we could watch the crews getting everything ready for the big day. The proximity to the Falls means that even if there is no rain in the forecast, you always have a chance of mist. The main desk on stage remained under a tarp for protection.
Since we had arrived the day before, we were able to go down into the gardens and get a close up view of the stage. This is what it would be like to be one of the lucky audience members in attendance when the show went live.
The audience members started to fill up the street at the bottom of Clifton Hill, waiting for their chance to enter the gardens.
While the crowd squeezed into the gardens, we admired the beauty of Niagara Falls and were quite happy having our own private viewing area. It may have been way in the back, but we had an unobstructed view.
As show time approached we headed down to the hotel lobby. Rumour had it that the stars themselves were in the hotel and getting ready to walk across to the Oakes Garden Theatre. Next thing we knew we had a front row seat as Kelly & Ryan were greeted to cheers from their fans.
We headed back up to our private viewing suite. We were just in time to catch the start of the show.
Kelly & Ryan addressed the crowd of mostly Canadian fans. It is only a short walk or drive across the Rainbow Bridge to get to New York state for any American fans in attendance.
Kelly & Ryan sat at their big white desk. The desk was nice and dry after being protected under tarps waiting for the hosts to arrive.
To make the show even more Canadian, one of the guests was Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The highlight of his appearance seemed to be that he wore R2-D2 and C-3PO Star Wars socks.
Since Kelly & Ryan had been nice enough to visit us in Canada, we decided to see more of them when we were in New York City. The show is filmed at ABC studios at West 67th Street and Columbus Ave. in Manhattan.
If you follow West 67th Street into Central Park you will see a row of benches as you enter the park. One of those is dedicated to Kelly Ripa.
The bench congratulates Kelly Ripa for over 30 years with the Walt Disney Company which owns ABC. Kelly has been with LIVE for over 20 years and shows no signs of stopping. Her next co-host will be her husband Mark Consuelos. If they choose to do another taping from Niagara Falls, we know where we will be watching from.
