[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.

[Windflier]

I remember this well...

Another day and time. A different country, even.

[Slyfox]

In those days, when your baby got you up at 3 in the morning, you could not turn on FOX and watch "Red Eye" or HGTV and watch the latest installment of "House Hunters."

It was hell I tell ya, pure hell.

[Kirkwood]

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.

[Clint N. Suhks]

Never worked 2nd or 3rd shift hey?

[ansel12]

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.

[bigbob]

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.

[greene66]

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.

[greene66]

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.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Well, today they show non-stop Nobel Indonesian profiles...so maybe things haven’t changed all that much. :)

[GeronL]

Earnest Borgnine.... RIP

[GeronL]

I remember staying up late Saturday nights for NWA wrestling live from Dallas on Channel 11 (10pm to midnight), KTVT. It was a family thing, we had no idea this was more or less a local-regional program. This was a huge deal back then, lol.

We lived in an old house without AC, in north Texas. We had a single water cooler in the living room and that was it.

[The Cajun]

I can remember when the 2 TV stations out of New Orleans would shut down around 10-10:30 PM.
National Anthem, test pattern for 15 minutes then snow.

[Bullish]

You mean back when public schools still actually taught patriotism?

[Panzerfaust]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XRYg70HHkQs&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DXRYg70HHkQs

This was my favorite sign off from the 70’s/ early 80’s

[Finny]

What a great post! {^) Thanks for the good chuckle!

I remember waking up to the sign-off drone plenty of times. I loved it when it was on the old Indian head or the target, somethign like that. But toward the end, it was just vertical stripes of obnoxious colors. Maybe I'd fallen asleep in my Nth watching of "The Big Sleep." I loved the crap-shoot of old movies on late-night TV. The wierd thing is while I saw "The Big Sleep" literally about 100 times over my late-night TV-sneaking youth, I still regularly watch and love that movie.

But hey, I remember when an Apple III computer cost about $4,000 and was treated with such respect in the office that few dared to approach it. It had big green screen square lettering on the screen. I think you could play pong on it, but don't recall exactly. Four thousand dollars, in the early '80s. Five years later, that fancy computer wasn't worth fifty bucks.

[Mozilla]

Here are some links to video of different sign-offs...

A generic Sign off from a station in San Francisco KBHK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M29IW13fDjQ

Another one from Texas station KRGV-TV
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkDPvuidzLg

Here is one with a sign-off for four stations with the same closing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9Qvev8EaF0

And one from Philadelphia in 1971
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW2_rEBgeOo

a 1960s sign off
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZ_rQKAy7c

Sign-off from the 50s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuIic17ijP8

One More
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hZROQtZlYM

It is neat seeing the different kinds of sign-offs.

[Drago]

KMJ-TV24, Fresno (McClatchy before they went hard left...Eleanor was still alive) “Bee” sign off: http://youtu.be/IGmfijNQE8E

[a fool in paradise]

I recall when the broadcasters would conclude their broadcast day with an brass band instrumental rendition of the National Anthem with footage of flag presentation.

Others would begin with such footage.

There is a radio station in Houston that draws attention to how no one is doing it anymore and has returned to playing the National Anthem at 6:00AM (1070AM KTRH).

Late night tv now is surrendered to informercials.

Even the alphabet networks local affiliates do this.

And pay-tv cable channels are full of ads. Why pay for tv if you are paying to watch ads and fund liberal networks that you never watch and cannot opt out of?