Mostly for fuzzface00...

[damont]

http://www.tv-signoffs.com/ is a small collection of TV station sign-off and sign-on clips, from the era when television stations actually went dark overnight, and had formal sign-ons and sign-offs to begin and end the broadcast day.

The "Sign-off Clip Of The Week" this week is from WCBS-TV, Channel 2 in New York, from 1980. At that time Channel 2 signed off for a *whole hour* every day (5 to 6 AM)!

Comments

[principia.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, for the days of the Late, Late Movie and channel signoffs.

I think pretty much the only stations nowadays that don't broadcast 24/7 are some of the smaller PBS stations.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

Yeah... I remember when over half of the *radio* stations in my area signed off for the wee hours... and that doesn't count the ones whose license was daylight-only. Nowadays you still have the daytimers on AM, but they are fewer, and everyone else is 24-hour -- although a *LOT* of them are straight automation between midnight and 0500, which only barely counts.

[principia.livejournal.com]

There are so many of the ClearChannel stations that are automated all the time anyway, or pretend to be local but aren't. I remember the morning guy from DC101 (his name escapes me at the moment, but byronczimmer would know) got in trouble for rerecording some of the hotkeyed show promos for one of the other teams that broadcasts out of the DC101 studios but pretend to be local in their most successful markets. The rerecordings in question were making fun of people in the markets who were being conned into thinking this other team was local.

He got in a little trouble, but the engineer for the other guys got fired for not checking that the recordings were what they should've been before punching the 'go' button.

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

True, too true. But the incredibly sorry state of radio these days (and how it got that way over the past 20 years and especially since 1996) is a rant for another day...