Television lighting requirements

[Rinehart]

Everybody knows that the lighting requirements in early television were extraordinary, and the horror stories are legion--actors' hair catching on fire, etc--but in Television in America: Local Station History From Across the Nation the author Michael D. Murray makes a statement that sounds unlikely. In discussing KSD-TV in St. Louis, Missouri, he says "...working conditions were quite demanding. Early television required a lot of lighting, and these programs routinely employed five banks of spotlights, each with 1,000 650-watt bulbs..." [p. 217] By my reckoning, this means they were drawing three-and-a-quarter million watts for lighting alone, which seems excessive. Unfortunately he doesn't cite a reference so I can't check it. How does this figure strike everyone here?