Posted on 09/10/2013 8:32:11 PM PDT by lee martell
Whoops, I can see I misspelled NOBLE, but I have no way to reach back in there and correct it. Oh Well. Next time, next time.
Yep. Your typo will live on in FR lore from this day, forward. Immortal-like, even.
Another day and time. A different country, even.
It was hell I tell ya, pure hell.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a TV station signoff, but it must have been in the late 1990s. There was a local public TV station that would always sign off with the Star Spangled Banner and show the US flag being raised on Iwo Jima.
Never worked 2nd or 3rd shift hey?
America used to go to sleep at night, which made the night time a truly magical place for the wild cats, and there were almost no cops out and about.
Cheech: “What’re you watching , man”
Chong: “It’s a movie about Indians man but its really boring”
Godzilla, Rodan, Monster X, Mothra... Those were the days, er nights.
I don't remember if Cal Worthington ran his "spots" at those hours, though, lol.
There isn’t much video of real authentic sign-offs from the 50s thru 70s, since video tape was either not invented yet or not likely to be wasted on something as mundane as a sign-off. But most often it was a standard announcement like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRCKDaI9lOs
Followed by the National Anthem.
EVERY station I’ve been around played the National Anthem, ever night.
One thing I frankly do miss about the days of having just three tv-channels, which would all sign-off as the late-night hours progressed... is that you really ‘felt’ the lateness of the hour. Felt it down to your bones. Commercials were more specifically low-key and befitting the late time. It made the whole experience of staying up and watching something a more distinctly unique and memorable event.
You can’t quite capture that same thing anymore. There’s not the same element of ‘locality,’ via the local stations. It’s all national in scope. With hundreds of networks all blaring the same kind of material that is found in daytime, 24-hours-a-day.
I remember staying up really late and watching this sign off called, “High Flight” with video of a T-38 flying through the clouds with a narrator reading a poem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uGP74qRzSc
Loved it.
LMAO!
Man, those were the days, weren't they? I used to split a gut listening to those guys.
Oh yeah. I remember it well. I used to beg my mom to let me stay up and watch the Million Dollar Movie. I never made it through a single one when she did :-)
I would have never had as many kids if I couldn’t feed them and watch the house flipping shows at 3am.
That's it! I was just trying to remember the name of that poem.
Sometimes I would make sure to stay up until sign-off, just so I could hear it. It gave me chills every time.
Thanks!
Plus, the late-show movies were such a deliriously crazy-quilt lot back then... 40s classics starring the likes of Alan Ladd, cheapo Roger Corman films from the late-50s, Japanese monster movies, obscure 40s/50s British b-films, Italian gladiator movies, old-time 30s films, Charlie Chan titles, b-westerns, Dorothy Lamour sarong films.
I still seem to remember just about every oddball film I saw as a late-show offering. I could probably list hundreds. Things like “Big Broadcast of 1937” to Roger Corman’s “Rock All Night” to a little-known, modern-day train film “Night Freight” starring Forrest Tucker. “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” “The Atomic City,” “Loan Shark,” eh, the list could go on and on.
Two more favorites are Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, episodes of One STEP BEYOND.
Wow! Thank you so much for posting that. I was a young kid and *loved* High Flight! I thought it was amazing. I would stay up late just to watch it. Ah, memories of a different time.
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