[old_tv_nut]

George Brown states in his book that the lab for these tests was established in 1951 in Astoria, about 3 miles from the Empire State Building.

Rocky Point would not have been used for color system and receiver compatibility tests; maybe for fringe area reception at some point, as it is almost 60 miles distant.

Brown also describes the sequence of events as:
WNBT finished its regular schedule at midnight.
Ray Kell, engineer in Astoria, requested and got some test patterns.
After about 30 minutes, John Million (an exec who had been moved from supervising the Silver Springs lab outside DC when it shut down) asked for live material. Brown put him off for a couple of hours until Kell was done with his tests, about 2 am. Then Million said he had seen a bowl of fruit in the studio, and asked that the face model, Marie, hold some fruit. At this point, Brown quickly had Marie hold the bananas while he painted them blue, and then sent her before the cameras. According to Brown, it was John Millions, not the engineers, who spent some time as the butt of the joke trying to make the receiver look right.