The Museum of Radio and Television was founded by William S. Paley, who had built CBS up from a small radio station to a powerhouse TV network. In 2007, it was renamed The Paley Center for Media, to better reflect changes in their mission from only radio and TV history to multiple media and their effects on culture and society. The Paley Museum at 25 W 52nd Street in Midtown Manhattan features exhibitions still primarily related to television shows, and also allows access to view vast archives of virtually anything that has been televised, and an entire floor with classic and virtual reality games. Despite having walked past it for decades, I checked the museum out for the first time recently! Spoiler alert, I enjoyed my visit and there is a lot there to do.

There are Paley Archives in Beverly Hills, inside the Beverly Hills Public Library, but the Paley Center in Midtown Manhattan fills multiple floors of a large office building on West 52nd St. You can find out how to become a member on their website (and I will weigh in later on whether I think this might be a good option if you live in NYC), but for one visit you can purchase timed tickets for a 30 minute entry period on a specific day. Once you are in the museum, you can stay until the center closes, so an early time slot is obviously preferable.

The big exhibition on the ground floor when I went was about the show Everybody Loves Raymond (it is just being replaced by a new exhibit on The Office). I have actually never seen ELR, but I was very impressed with the detail. You could sit on their sofa (photo opportunity!), see an Emmy, look at scripts and costumes, and watch videos from behind the scenes. This was as elaborate as pop-up exhibits about individual shows (which often charge as much as more for one exhibit than the Paley Museum does for the entire experience), and more detailed than what you could see on a Studio Tour in Los Angeles (I’ve done many of those).

Heading up (there is an elevator), there is an exhibit about Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show (which ran from 1972-1992, taped in Burbank, California). They were playing the last episode he ever aired, and you could sit at his desk (another photo op!), or on the sofa where so many famous guests sat, or in seats from the studio audience.

Heading up again, I visited the Paley archives. If you are a Paley member, you can visit them as often as you would like, but if you are on a one-day ticket, you get 90 minutes. They have over 160,000 television and radio programs and advertisements, covering more than 100 years of television and radio history. The collection spans all genres: comedy, drama, news, public affairs, performing arts, children’s, sports, reality, animation, and documentary, and includes a significant international presence, with 70 countries represented. You sit at a large desk with no one on either side of you, with comfortable headphones. You could watch Jacqueline Kennedy give a tour of The White House, or watch David Bowie be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, there are almost limitless options. I had decided in advance to pull up the 1988 Tony Awards, which I had watched at home in Chicago about two months before I moved to New York City. What a treat! The quality of what you view in the archives is significantly better than videos you can find on YouTube. I had to scrub through a few things to make it in 90 minutes, but Into the Woods and Phantom of the Opera traded off awards, and M Butterfly won Best Play (and I liked the short live excerpts from plays they performed in addition to the musical numbers). There was a tribute to Michael Bennett (who had died in the previous year from AIDS), Patti LuPone sang and danced in Anything Goes, Angela Lansbury hosted, and Bernadette Peters and Joel Grey presented. A delight!

On the top floor, there is a gaming room with over 65 video games and over 25 virtual reality games. I saw on the website that this has been voted the best birthday party venue in NYC, and I can see why! If you enjoy video games or someone in your family does, I could also see a day pass or even a yearly membership being worth it just for this area of the Center.

The Paley Center has continuous screenings in their basement floor theater. The day I went, it was episodes of Everybody Loves Raymond, with one episode of Downtown Abbey thrown in (because the new movie was being released). They also have regular in-person events with television creatives, usually around either an exhibition on display, or around an anniversary of a certain show (the 40th anniversary of The Golden Girls is an upcoming event, for example). There is PaleyFest yearly in October – last year there were moderated talks with creatives and performers from Outlander, Blue Bloods, What We Do in the Shadows, and The Diplomat, among others. PaleyFest 2025 participants should be announced soon.

I enjoyed my visit to the Paley Museum and found the price for a one day pass reasonable. I could see that if you were planning to see a few of the different exhibitions throughout the year, enjoyed visiting the archive, or loved playing video games, that a membership could make a lot of sense. With so many opportunities in NYC, it’s easy to overlook some like the Paley Center – but keep it in mind!