In Honor of Flag Day
25Are you old enough to remember when TV stations would sign off at night and play The Star Spangled Banner?
For you youngsters:
The daily sign-off typically occurs between around 11:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. and the station will remain closed until about 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.
Gray Media TV stations throughout the U.S. will be bringing back the sign off tradition with a new version of our national anthem. Please take a couple of minutes to watch this video. It is so beautiful.
https://www.kwch.com/content/news/KWCH-will-air-The-Star-Spangled-Banner-511244782.html
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Old enough to remember this?
@heartny They just showed something like this on all the Starz channels the other day when they were doing some update or something so it’s still in use. Thanks for the graphic! I’ve always wondered what each part of the image was for. Especially the Indian Head. (And I always think the bottom part looks like a pair of ladies undies hehe)
@heartny @qwerty82 @heartny The cause of many of my nightmares. I was such a screwed up kid.
/image Indian tv test pattern
In glorious black and white.
@heartny @qwerty82 Living in Kansas, I thought the bottom part looked like a tornado. Yep, more nightmares.
@Barney @heartny @qwerty82 Yeah… like fever dreams.
I’m barely old enough, but I do remember it. I kinda wish the TV would shut down for a late night siesta. Maybe we’d be smarter…?
@zinimusprime I remember when I was just a little kid and on the rare occasions that I was up for the sign off, it scared me to death. I didn’t like that after the flag and music faded, the screen would turn gray with static and make an annoying buzzing noise.
I learned to hide this from my parents. Why? I don’t know. I guess I wanted them to know how brave their little girl was. So when the last bars of the Star Spangled Banner would start to end, I’d run to my bedroom, yelling “goodnight” to my folks. I’m sure they thought that they were raising a very strange child.
They were right.
@Barney @zinimusprime I remember this one the most.
Yep… watching that test pattern. And WE were the remote control.
@lseeber At least we learned to count - from 2 to 13.
@lseeber We were lucky as kids; my parents were given a 25" black and white Packard Bell TV with a remote control; it stayed with the house they bought. The remote was a big plastic box with about 3/8" thick cable 20 feet long connected to the TV. It was awesome!
POKER! JOKER! NOT MEDIOCRE! AWESOME!
@duodec huh… I don’t recall ever seeing one with a cable. I know when we finally got one it was this big thingy that went clunk-clunk each time you changed the channel and it was like the tv ‘flipped’ or rolled to the next channel.
@lseeber My aunt (who always bought the new and neat) bought one of those while we were still on the B&W TV. They used metal bars that were struck (like a xylophone) and the sound triggered the TV to change channels; I think the early ones actually used motors in the TV to ‘turn the knobs’ in response to the button presses.
I’ve never found a picture of the wired remote online (Packard Bell Control Master); I think the faceplate from it is buried in a box somewhere in storage. The closest I’ve seen is this ad; you can zoom in and see a “representation” of the remote. Large channel selector knob, three smaller knobs for volume, contrast, brightness, and a switch to use the TV speakers or a small speaker in the remote is what I remember. I think it was VHF only, no UHF, and the remote had the only controls; there were none on the TV proper (except for the adjustment pots on the backside that you accessed through holes in the hardboard backing).
@duodec huh… new one on me. I can’t really zoom in as I’m on a laptop but, I think I get the idea. I"m surprised I’m not familiar with it. Although something about turning the dial sounds familir. My grandfather usually had the cool tv stuff. At the time he was 3rd in command under Dr. Dumont @ Dumont Tv. Seems that the goodies would have dribbled down to us at some point but it didn’t, lol. I think I was 12 or 13 by the time we had a color tv.
I don’t specifically remember it myself but I do remember the scene in Curly Sue where she’s standing on the bed, hand on her heart and belts it out after the end of the broadcast day before she heads to bed. That was such a cute scene.
“Play ball!”
Only the geezers will remember sending a kid up to the roof to turn the antenna until the right channel came in, and someone yelled out the window to stop. I was fortunate to have older brothers who got “tuner duty” so I didn’t have to. Falling off a roof while tuning a TV channel wasn’t the way I wanted to die.
@rockblossom Of course for those using “rabbit ears” the youngest siblings got rabbit ear duty. “Hold on to the antenna - OK, move a little bit to the left… Turn a little… No, no, too much. OK, perfect, now just stand there until the show is over…”
@mehcuda67 @rockblossom THAT and get up and change the channel, uuhhh no change it again, etc
@rockblossom
Had to do this for locally blacked-out football games.
I’m definitely old enough. The singer’s voice is lovely.
@cinoclav Yeah, she’s got quite a voice for a nine year old.
@Barney @cinoclav Yeah, she’s got a great voice, but why are they making a 9 year-old sing at 3:58AM?
@Barney @cinoclav @mehcuda67 Even on school nights?
And this annoyance, which never failed to make the dogs howl:
I remember it as a kid. Don’t know that I’ll ever see it now because I don’t watch much live TV. I guess I could stream it on youtube…
@medz All my local channels never end their broadcast day. Haven’t for years.