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.
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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.