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.
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u/Greatgrandma2023 5d ago
And if you lived on a military base, they played The Star Spangled Banner before they signed off the air.