NY Times old TV story

[edison64]

Fond memories of station sign on and offs... both had the national anthem and announced fcc info.. my favorite u as cbs, they would sign off with the eye in red.with black background. Announcer would say "station wcbs, new York. ..goodnight" snowy screen.

[bgadow]

When I was 10-15 y.o. there were many times when I'd stay up well past midnight...or get up at 5am. (but probably not both in the same day!) I used to know all the station sign-ons and offs. A couple stayed on all night: I remember WMAR-2 in Baltimore airing "Private Secretary" at 3am. WRC-4 in DC would just have the station logo up with a periodic i.d. by the announcer. Many nights I'd fall asleep watching Letterman or SNL. If I was watching WRC, I awoke to the announcers voice in the middle of the night. If I was tuned to WBAL-11 I'd awake to what I thought at first was wild applause but it was actually static, as they'd signed off for the night. Around that time I picked up a 60s Emerson portable (still have it) with a sleep timer, so that solved the problem.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by bgadow

When I was 10-15 y.o. there were many times when I'd stay up well past midnight...or get up at 5am. (but probably not both in the same day!) I used to know all the station sign-ons and offs. A couple stayed on all night: I remember WMAR-2 in Baltimore airing "Private Secretary" at 3am. WRC-4 in DC would just have the station logo up with a periodic i.d. by the announcer. Many nights I'd fall asleep watching Letterman or SNL. If I was watching WRC, I awoke to the announcers voice in the middle of the night. If I was tuned to WBAL-11 I'd awake to what I thought at first was wild applause but it was actually static, as they'd signed off for the night. Around that time I picked up a 60s Emerson portable (still have it) with a sleep timer, so that solved the problem.

I was like that too. I'd stay up until the Cleveland TV stations signed off for the night, and I also knew every station's sign on and sign off announcements--even when the UHF stations came in (starting with NET [now PBS] channel 25 in 1965, then, three years later, channel 43, then channel 61 (they both signed on the same year), and finally, in 1985, channel 55. I would get up at 5:30 a.m. some mornings to see the stations sign on. Channel 3, the NBC station in Cleveland, had a rather unique test pattern with a color test chart actually built into the pattern--that is, the different colors were shown as wedges in between the resolution and video bandwidth indicators.


Channel 3 sign on: "WKYC TV channel 3 in Cleveland now begins its broadcast day. WKYC-TV is owned and operated by the National Broadcasting Company, with studios and offices located at 1403 East 6th Street in Cleveland, Ohio. Portions of today's programming is recorded and on film."

Channel 5: "This is WEWS-TV, your Scripps-Howard station, first in Cleveland. WEWS-TV opperates on channel 5, 76-82 megahertz, with studios located in the WEWS building, Euclid Avenue at East 30th."

I don't recall channel 8's sign on anymore, nor those of the UHF stations. Channel 8 used to run all night on Friday nights with horror films, returning to its standard 5 a.m. - 1 a.m. schedule the next day.

All three stations carried the announcement pertaining to rebroadcasting that station's programming without written consent. "The programs broadcast by this station may not be used for any purpose except exhibition at the time of broadcast, on receivers of the type used for home reception, in places where no admission, cover, or mechanical operating charges are made." The Cleveland stations stopped these announcements when they went to 24-hour telecasting, but some stations, such as WMAQ-TV in Chicago, would make the announcement at sign on and sign off well into the 1990s. The WMAQ sign off is now available on YouTube.

[vinljnkie]

Having lived my whole life in southern NH I can really identify with the author of this article and the trials and tribulations they went through to bring in a sketchy signal. I have probably done the same thing to see a Bruins or Red Sox game. I also remember laying in bed at night listening to my 1950's vintage Westinghouse clock radio, usually tuned into Larry Glick on WBZ in Boston or the Milkman's Matinee on WNEW in New York. Listening to Larry usually involved a lot of giggleing and snorting into my pillow as he would play the Orangutan (http://youtu.be/T-XeBvd5Pqw) or the graveyard maurader usually around 1AM when my parents would yell to turn the radio off and go to sleep. Now I can listen to and sometimes watch Bruins or sox games on my phone with perfect digital reproduction and while its easier I miss, a little bit, the effort one had to go through not so long ago...but I wouldn't go back.

[Robert Grant]

The sad part about this NYT article is that younger readers will completely believe the article and think that all TV before cable was snow, ghosty, rolled, and unreliable.

Only reinforcing the special effects on Mad Men that present all television viewing in the day as being by sporadic-E skip.

If you weren't between tall buildings, behind a hill, or just plain too far away from the transmitter sites, analog TV reception over-the-air could be excellent (unless one got too close to a big CRT where the inherent 480i resolution would be seen as unsharp). The first time I had cable (1990, long before DTV or HDTV), I saw some snow and moiré patterns in the picture on cable, so I would switch to the antenna to watch the local stations, even though they were on cable.

Another fact is that many of today's DTV subchannels with 480i look a LOT worse than analog 480i did due to compression (some 480i SDTV is almost as good as analog, but some of it can be badly compressed. When WNWO 24.1 has an HD program with a lot of motion, Retro 24.2 can look downright awful, like early internet video with a 56k telephone line modem. When the 24.1 program is not using so much data, the Retro looks a bit better).

[Sandy G]

The CATV antenna for Greater Bugtussle here was at the top of the local hillock that was the tallest, & reasonably accessible. In the Eighties, I had a JVC "All-in-Wonder"- 4.5" color TV, AM/FM/TV, cassette recorder/player, we'd take it up there & see what faraway TV stations we could get.. Turned out that we were only getting a SLIM portion of what was Out There.. There were usually 2 or 3 OTHER sources of major networks & PBS that we COULD have gotten, not to mention the "Other" independent lo-power stations.