Remember television station sign-offs?

[pokerfan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1XmwhDchP8#t=4m20s

[NYC_SKP]

1. I remember these.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkbghBLIll0

[pokerfan]

4. When I was a kid I used to get up early for the Saturday morning cartoons

Invariably, the test pattern would still be on.

[Drunken Irishman]

7. What was it like when Lincoln was shot?

[NYC_SKP]

12. Everyone here in the home remembers where they were that day....

Which reminds me of my favorite old timers' joke.

Three old men sitting out front of the bingo hall complaining about their, well, bodily functions.

Sam says, "hell, I go to pee and stand there for forty minutes waiting for a trickle."

Stu says, "hell, I'm up all night every thirty minutes having to pee"

Old Charlie says, "You two think YOU have problems? Why, every morning like clockwork at 7:00 I empty my bladder and take a full dump!"

Sam and Stu: "So, you call that a problem, what the hell do you mean?"

..

..

Old Charlie: "Well, I don't get out of bed until 8:00."

:P

[GreenPartyVoter]

16. Yeah, me too. Also waving flags and the national anthem playing.

[MorningGlow]

31. I remember the Indian test pattern

And--hey!--the test pattern of the TV station I used to work for is in there! (Test pattern = before my time working there, just for the record.) Cool! :hi:

[Inchworm]

2. It's 10pm.. do you know where your children are?

:D

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. When I was little, they kinda scared me

Seemed like the end of the world or somethin'. :scared:



So cool to watch now, though. Ahhh, nostalgia. :)

[enigmatic]

5. Oh yeah

I was a night owl even as a kid, and I remember the sign-offs of the local stations. I miss those, frankly..

[Born_A_Truman]

6. Ours was "High Flight"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL-KCFbIpA

[NYC_SKP]

10. Here's a couple memories...

Remember any of these shows? :P

[Dangerously Amused]

14. "Ruff and Reddy visit an 'aqueerium'...

...and make friends with a slippery seal."

omg, I'll just BET they did!

:rofl:

[NYC_SKP]

15. And this week on "Fury"...

"Jim and Pete are concerned about Joe and Pee Wee."

:P

[texanwitch]

18. I can remember Fury a little.

I may have watched the repeats.

Four guys living all alone on a ranch with a horse.

At least on Gunsmoke we had a Miss Kitty.

The westerns back then didn't seem to have a lot of woman.

[csziggy]

22. Captain Kangaroo, Circus Boy, Fury

I loved the Dancing Bear and Mr. Greenjeans. And Mickey Dolenz was cute - no wonder he grew up to be a Monkey! And I only watched Fury for the horse - the kid was a dork.

Other old TV shows I remember - Sky King, Sea Hunt, Bonanza, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Lassie.

[Sequoia]

32. Yes. Highway Patrol !!

That Halloween special looks great. I love those old B flicks. KOFY in SF has old B horror movies at midnight on Saturday so we tape and watch it Sunday morning with our coffee and Sunday paper.

http://www.kofytv.com/whats-on/programs/37282374.html

[Frank Cannon]

27. We had "High Flight" and the "Indian Chief Lord's Prayer"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UReVVrbL8xs

Funny how so many stations used the same themes for their sign-offs.

[Born_A_Truman]

35. I remember that one too!

I am soooooo old!

[BattyDem]

8. When I was a kid, I thought they were creepy.

I was a night owl and it freaked me out a little that the TV went to "sleep" before I did, LOL!

[KamaAina]

34. Roger that. I used to try to time it just right

so that I turned the set off after the national anthem was finished but before the transmitter cut off and the snow and harsh white noise started.

[Cant trust em]

9. Geez. What am I? Old?

Sorry, Gramps. I was born in the 80's.

=)

[Drunken Irishman]

11. That reminds me of Poltergeist.

Can't say I remember what it was like, though.

[Arugula Latte]

13. Oh, yeah. And I remember that tune they played on this one.

And I also remember that feeling of: "Oh, shit. I've stayed up waaaay too late again!"

[Tabasco_Dave]

17. when i was a kid i had a nightmare

so my dad let me watch the Tonight show with him since it wasn't a school night. When the national anthem came on he stood up and told me to stand, he said you even had to stand inside your house when it was played. he was joking but i was a kid so i didn't know.

[Mugu]

19. Not only do I remember sign-offs,

I remember dad jumping and bumping his head when the second anode bit him before he took the tubes to the local 7-11 to test them.

[mwooldri]

20. The BBC used to have "sign-offs" too.

Though we called them close downs.

Here's a BBC 2 closedown from 1998: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3_nRthHnbo&feature=related

And the final BBC 1 closedown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyKc6WBjzyE&feature=related (ropey quality).

Also... start ups (or sign ons) existed but BBC was boring... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCf4IO7uF8Q (before the Internet we had Teletext... interactive pages of information delivered over the TV).

ITV was better: my old local station Southern had this nifty scene in the 60's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=121-5HJngYs&feature=related - HTV had different things for their dual region: here's the HTV Wales start up from the early 1980's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD7p-zmDKbI&feature=related

We also had this wonderful thing called on-screen presentation. Grampian was the last region to have on-screen presenters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLtpy8Apx50&feature=related

Oh and if you really like sign offs then watch this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Kkmf8zHqnU

Mark.

[Oeditpus Rex]

25. I can't find video of the one I like

But here's the text. :D



1st Voice Over: (and Roller Caption) 'THE BBC WOULD LIKE TO APOLOGIZE TO EVERYONE IN THE WORLD FOR THE LAST ITEM. IT WAS DISGUSTING AND BAD AND THOROUGHLY DISOBEDIENT AND PLEASE DON'T BOTHER TO PHONE UP BECAUSE WE KNOW IT WAS VERY TASTELESS, BUT THEY DIDN'T REALLY MEAN IT AND THEY DO ALL COME FROM BROKEN HOMES AND HAVE VERY UNHAPPY PERSONAL LIVES, ESPECIALLY ERIC. ANYWAY, THEY'RE REALLY VERY NICE PEOPLE UNDERNEATH AND VERY WARM IN THE TRADITIONAL SHOW BUSINESS WAY AND PLEASE DON'T WRITE IN EITHER BECAUSE THE BBC IS GOING THROUGH AN UNHAPPY PHASE AT THE MOMENT, WHAT WITH ITS FATHER DYING AND THE MORTGAGE AND BBC 2 GOING OUT WITH MEN.'

2nd Voice Over: (and Roller Caption): 'THE BBC WOULD LIKE TO DENY THE LAST APOLOGY. IT IS VERY HAPPY AT HOME AND BBC 2 IS BOUND TO GO THROUGH THIS PHASE, SO FROM ALL OF US HERE GOOD NIGHT, SLEEP WELL, AND HAVE AN ABSOLUTELY SUPER DAY TOMORROW, KISS, KISS.'

[mwooldri]

37. And cue Richard Baker with the news... :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

41. '...until the name 'Maudling' is almost totally obscured.'

"That is the ned of the micro-not wens. And now it's time for the nate-light flim."

[pokerfan]

29. "Well, that's just about it."

Something about that made me laugh. And Steve Martin's 'The Jerk!'

I noticed that rather than cutting power to the transmitter, resulting in static, that the UK stations on those clips seemed to play an audible tone. Was this the norm or did 'any go to static?'

[mwooldri]

36. Depends on whether engineering work needed to be done or not.

It was usual to go to tone for a while - as a reminder to switch off the TV. Then after a while of that noise, if the engineers needed to do work they'd go to test card (and either continue with the tone or switch to music) or if no engineering work needs to be done that night - yes it'll go to static.

[bluesbassman]

21. Yeah, and pre-VHS when we waited all year to see The Wizard of Oz.

No cable either, so you couldn't scan 300+ stations to find it.:D

[texanwitch]

23. I also remember waiting for Peter Pan every year.

Of course watching The Wizard of Oz on black and white didn't help.

[mwooldri]

24. Here's a site about them: http://www.tv-signoffs.com/

[Jamastiene]

26. They're Heeeeere!

:P

[Blue_Tires]

28. I used to spend summers with my grandmother

in rural Alabama...she didn't have cable, and her regional stations used to sign off at 1:30 a.m. (national anthem and video of a fighter plane)...This was still going on well into the early 90s

[FloridaJudy]

30. Ours used to have some clergy

Offering an innocuous, non-denominational prayer just before the 'Star Spangled Banner'. They'd rotate it so you got Rabbi Thus and Such and Father So and So on different nights - or maybe that was just in San Francisco.

[Reverend_Smitty]

33. I remember them, they continued well into the 90's...

I know PBS used to sign off until very recently and yes, it did freak me out as a little kid as did that beeeeeeeep sound from the Emergency Broadcast System tests that would come on from time to time.

[rucky]

38. So what happened to the Good Television Code?

[KansDem]

39. I grew up in the Los Angeles basin during the 1950s-70s

And we had something called "The Word Is..."--an inspirational message produced by Unity Village.

Noted celebrities, like Greg Morris, Raymond Burr, and others would come on with something like, "The word is...acceptance" or "...tolerance" or "...reflection" or some other transcendental-like beingness.

It would show them walking by a brook...soft introspective music...with their voice-over.

This came on right before the Star Spangled Banner.

[KamaAina]

40. The CBS affiliate in Springfield, MO used to sign off at 10:45 on Sunday night!

KOLR, channel 10.

10:45! No surprise then that Springfield has since been overrun by fundies, or rather, they were always there and then got political. :puke: