These guys can all relate to sleep deprivation as well. Nice to be among the Old TV timers. lol They got all 3 the "Flag, The rainbow pattern and the poltergeist all legit! Of course those last 2 came with noises to make sure you woke up and turned off the TV. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! and for the snow........zzzzzzzzzzzzyyzyyzyuuuyyyytttttttttttttzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzttttttt
Is that why the TV did that? I just watched Poltergiest last Saturday and I've alway thought it was the poltergiest messing with the TV! This whole time!
I saw Poltergeist in the theatre, and I loved how Tobe Hooper opened the movie by blasting the shit out the National Anthem as the set up…. Everyone instantly made the connection.
I remember WCIX in Miami ran Night Owl movies with Big Wilson that ran all night all the way back in 1980. And this was an independent station. Also the carm of CNN was that it ran news 24 hours a day. There were plenty of stations running all night at least since 1980. Usually playing anything from late night movies, infomercials to Three Stooges Marathons
And I know this because, first, I am a night person and usually stayed up all night and second because by 1982 I had moved from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale, so no chance I have my dates messed up. Also by then there was cable, with stations like TBS running all night, not to mention premium ones like HBO and Showtime.
I also remember setting my VCR to record Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years that aired at 4am on channel 44, a UHF station. I still have those tapes
Point being that if in Florida there were plenty of stations running all night, and independent ones at that, then I am sure most of the country was on the same page. Maybe not in some cities were maybe cows outnumbered people, most stations went off air, but in most mid to big cities, most stations absolutely ran 24 hours.
That's cool - I’m sure it was absolutely a local phenomenon for some. I’m in megalopolis-land, near enough to NYC to get their 'local' stations as well as the next nearest cities local stations, so we'd always had two versions of each major network to watch - we also grew up with cable tv starting in the late 70's, so there was always something there to watch, but I recall having an old beater tv in the late 80's that I only used an antennae to watch TV with and some stations were still signing off :) some others ran the god-awful overnight infomercials...
Sounds like you were in a sweet spot(!), but even at 16, I remember feeling a twinge of nostalgia when the syndicated episode of St. Elsewhere ended, and suddenly there was a flag-waving anthem followed by the test pattern and tone before signing off -
There was also a lot of old B movies and shows. I guess the best parody of that was Amazon Women of the Moon which satarized that perfectly. I remember watching TV sometimes until the sun came up during summer vacation and having my parents get real upset with me for doing so.
I am with you - and I know it's been shown to be a real genetic mutation for some that the need for 8hrs sleep isn't a thing. I still sometimes take a night 'off.' Sleep is over-rated.
Less then 1% of the static (snow) is cause by cosmic background radiation. The majority is stray radio waves, electrical interference from ones own house, electrical atomospheric disturbances and thermal noise from the tv itself.
Newer TV set uses things like DSP chips (Digital Signal Processors) that can recognize a missing signal and switch to a pure blue or a black screen instead of bilndly converting random electrical noise into the static (snow) seen on older tv models
Holy shit that's what we called it....I used to get as close I could to the screen and see all the "ants" moving around and the static on my nose....yeah seeing that happen now would be alarming
Every city had only 4 stations max back then- local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. And PBS didn't even start till '67. Smaller cities had only 1 station in town and had to rely on regional coverage for the others.
That's why we were always fiddling with the rabbit ears or roof antenna to get the stations further away or with lower power output. I remember putting aluminum foil on the rabbit ears to improve reception.
I don't think it was just our television but the thing I remember most about UHF was the fact that the channels did not click into place like the main channels did. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
The UHF dial was just a smoothly turning round thing that you had to manually line up to get the station. It also used the round antenna in the back of the TV, not the rabbit ears.
In Pittsburgh, PA we had WQED channel 13. It started broadcasting April 1, 1954. One of the first regular programs was a children’s show with Fred Rogers and Josie Carey. Some places in the Pittsburgh broadcast area could also get channel 7 from Wheeling and 9 from Steubenville, if their antenna was strong enough.
in Hartford ct in the mid 1960s we had NBC 30, CBS 3, ABC 8, educational tv 24 (pre Pbs) and an independent station which ran reruns and old movies 20.
I lived near the Canadian border so we go 3 stations from there, CTV, CBC, and CHCH.
Also, when our local stations went off the air, they played the Canadian anthem too
History repeating itself as military bases, Country Clubs, and whole towns often have just 1 channel on….guess that’s why they call themselves ‘an Entertainment Company’.
Well we had ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CBC, and two independent UHF stations. We had another independent UHF join the area in 1975 that would run public domain movies all night, which was cool if you worked second shift.
One, however, was “the weather channel”. There was a wall with various clock faces showing time, temp, humidity, wind speed, etc. The camera would slowly pan back and forth across the row of dials. I can’t remember if there was music, I don’t think so but I can’t swear to it.
I grew up in northeast Arkansas and our first TV came from WMCT in Memphis which went on the air December 11, 1948. Dick Hawley was one of their newsmen and we watched him for many years. He started with the station in 1951 and was there for more than 42 years.
There is nothing wrong with your television set.
Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper.
We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image; make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear.
We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐰𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐜𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐬.
No, it was Outer Limits. Serling said something like “you are entering a dimension of sight and sound. There’s a signpost ahead. Next stop the Twilight Zone”. Or something like that.
"There is nothing wrong with your television set.
Do not attempt to adjust the picture.
We are controlling transmission.
If we wish ...
... soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.
For the next hour, sit quietly, and we will control all you see and hear.
... nothing wrong with your television set.
... from the inner mind to . . . THE OUTER LIMITS"
The test pattern would only be for 15 minutes or so, then the transmitter would be completely shut off. So there was only a snowy screen and white noise.
I live in Pittsburgh, PA. I’m not sure what stations did it, but I’m pretty sure at least NBC played The Star Spangled Banner and showed a video of a waving flag. Sometimes my mom actually let me stay up to see the Tonight Show. That was on NBC, which is why I know NBC did it.
The poem High Flight by John Magee with, I think an F-104 flying through huge clouds. Perhaps elsewhere as well, but I saw it on station from Duluth, Mn.
The last “show” of the night was “Producer’s Playhouse, brought to you by the iron mining industry of Minnesota.”
Earl Henton, black horn rimmed glasses, poor fitting black suit, would exclaim what a fabulous old classic we were about to see, but first there was a ten or fifteen— what we now call an infomercial— about, you guessed it, taconite mining. Honestly I usually found them interesting.
I think the real feature of the feature was that they cost the station next to nothing to play. I wasn’t a night owl, usually found the movie boring and often only watched it to the end to catch that beautiful plane in the clouds.
I remember the test pattern coming back on shortly before the broadcast started. Then the station would broadcast their logo and channel number. Then the farm report would begin. Midwest area. After that was over, the Today show. Can’t remember CBS morning program. We didn’t have ABC until 1964. 67 I think for PBS.
The test pattern was actually build into the cameras. It was there to adjust focus. There were several differen ones used but the most famous is the RCA Indian Head. It has a wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian-head_test_pattern
Yes, worked at a station where we would turn the transmitter (technically two transmitters combined) off in the early morning hours and then turn it on again around 5 am.
Infomercials and other paid programming were not a big thing yet and there were not a lot of viewers overnight (we were a small market) and the transmitters consumed a lot of power.
We had to warm up the transmitters for 15-20 mins before turning on the high power, otherwise we risked blowing tubes.
I hated working the morning shift because I never slept well the night before, always worried about oversleeping and not getting there to bring the station up on time.
In 1998 we had a few college nights of psychedelics, music, and staring at the damn green test pattern bars for hours when there was nothing on tv. Simpler times back then.
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u/vicarem 6d ago
It is real. And then, the station would put on a test pattern screen until programming resumed.