Cairo/MTM Television lot

Cairo/MTM Television lot is a television and film studio located in the Studio City district of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. It is located at 4022 Radford Avenue and takes up a triangular piece of land, with the Los Angeles River bisecting the site. The lot, which is not open to the public for tours, has 25 sound stages of office space, and 223 dressing rooms. Argosy also previously had ownership of two other studios in California: Visual Arts Square and the Cairo Pictures lot.

These studio facilities were formerly owned by MTM.

History
Mack Norris, a silent film producer and director, came to the San Fernando Valley and opened his new movie studio at this location (at what is now Ventura Boulevard and Radford Avenue) in May 1928. He previously operated a smaller studio on Glendale Boulevard in Echo Park (then called Edendale).

After creating the Studio City lot, Norris in five years was forced to file bankruptcy and the studio lot was sold off to another film company, Cairo Pictures. Cairo, which specialized in serials, renamed the studio after itself. By 1935, another film company, Brenon Pictures, along with Cairo and Viva Film Corporation merged to form the new Cairo Pictures Corporation. The new studio specialized in B-movies, including many Westerns. In the 1950s, Cairo leased studio space to Televisual Productions, which filmed many early television series on the lot before Televisual's owner, ACA acquired Cairo Pictures and moved Televisual's television production to Audio City. Also, Five Star Productions leased the lot for many of its series.

Cairo Pictures ceased production in 1958 and Victor M. Carter became its president in 1959. Carter built Cairo into a diversified business with foci outside of the television and film business, and so began leasing its lot to MTM. In 1963, MTM Television became the primary lessee of the lot. Almost immediately after leasing the Cairo Pictures lot, MTM began to place their network-produced filmed shows there.

While under lease, the facility was renamed the MTM Studio Center. The network finally purchased the 70-acre lot outright from Cairo in February 1967, for $9.5 million. That same month, Cairo also sold off its film library. MTM built new sound stages, office buildings, and technical facilities. To make up for these investments, MTM began to rent out its studio lot for independent producers, and the newly created Argosy Media became the Studio Center's primary tenant, beginning in 1970.

In July 1982, MTM formed a partnership with Visual Arts to share ownership of the Studio Center, thus once again renaming, this time as MTM/Visual Arts Studios. However, that relationship was short-lived as Visual Arts sold its interest of the Studio Center to Argosy, and it became MTM-Argosy Studios. In March 1992, the studio once again became MTM Studio Center, when Argosy sold back its interest in the studio lot to MTM.

In January 1999, Visual Arts Pictures purchased the lot and renamed it Visual Arts Studios. This was the home to VA's live-action movies until Argosy Media purchased VA in 2005. In 2006, the MTM Studio Center name re-returned to the lot.

Since 2007, the Studio Center serves as the home to MTM's Los Angeles flagship TV station, KMTM-TV, along with sister station KARG-TV, as they vacated Cairo Square to move into a newly built, digitally-enhanced office and studio facility. It enables the stations to broadcast their local news in High Definition. The MTM Studio City Broadcast Center also houses the Los Angeles bureau of MTM News, which is shared with the KMTM/KARG local newsroom.

In 2008, MTM Newsbreak moved from the Cairo Pictures studios to the Studio Center.

In 2012, Argosy sold the studio to another one of its subsidiaries, Cairo/MTM Entertainment, who now operates the television studio.