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Originally Posted by Coolhand68
Speaking of black and white television, I can remember when stations went off the air for the night. They'd play the National Anthem with the flag in the background followed by what looked like a dartboard with numbers on it that stayed on the screen until the station went back on the air that morning.
Originally Posted by Puddy4LyF
That sounds utterly useless and ridiculous. Let me just say when I got food poisoning in 7th grade and couldn't sleep the entire night because I was up puking 9 times that I'm GLAD that wasn't on my television. Instead, I watched a Cosby marathon. ::Phew::
Originally Posted by Coolhand68
It was ridiculous, I never understood why they went off the air and totally disregarded an audience that perhaps worked nights and slept days or just stayed up late. In the 80's/90's when they did stay on the air all night it was all informercials. At least in the 80's you had the VCR.
The "target" (usually with an Indian Chief at the center) was an SMPTE (society of motion picture and television engineers) test slide. It was used to properly align the tv sets AND the equipment at the station. It generally went off within a few minutes, unless there was something unusual going on.
Hours of radio/television operation were often dictated by the FCC, but the simple fact was that television commercial costs were often ten times or more greater than radio ads. That meant the advertisers that would support the cost of the power, equipment depreciation, and engineers, avoided tv ads after about 11PM because of lack of viewers. People who were up at that hour and later were generally not kids, but farmers who had a radio on in the barn, housewives doing some late-night canning or housework, and factory workers.
The infomercial was a brilliant use of otherwise dead air time, where the block of time could be negotiated down in price enough to make it profitable.
I am of the opinion that true overnight programming only became fully viable in most markets with the advent of the video cassette recorder. That allowed movies to be shown overnight, with the knowledge that the viewers would record the movie and the commercials for later viewing. Since the cost of the ads and program material was dirt cheap, and the movie might be viewed more than once, it made sense to both the advertisers and stations.
I'm 37 and grew up in New York City and clearly remember all of this as well.A 13" b&w UHF TV was the most that we had with rabbit ears and tin foil.Playing sports on the weekend from 7 am to 8 pm.
The first TV station that I ever heard of that stayed on all night with live talent (not just canned junk) was CJON-TV in the unlikey venue lf St. John's, Newfoundland. Newfoundlanders are incorrigibly tolerant of wierdness, regarding everything with an undiluted Irish bemusement, and the station was owned by a bizarre hippy named Geoff Stirling who met some bums in California or someplace and got the brainstorm of putting them on TV all night. When they asked what were the limits, Geoff said "Don't say f***", so they just turned on the cameras and lights and goofed off. That was in the early 70's.
In the 50's, even daytime TV was a rarity. I recall a station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that had a radio affiliate, and they put a camera in the control room of the radio station, so daytime viewers could listen to the radio audio and watch the disc jockey at work.
Anyone remember UHF? Those fuzzy stations on that other dial.
In most medium sized eastern markets, all stations were UHF. Lexington KY was when I lived there, had to experimtallyt keep rigging tinfoil on the circular "rabbit ears".
There weren't enough VHF channels to go around, and they had to have at leat 300 miles separation to avoid interfering with each other.
One city could not have adjacent channels, so one city would get 2 4 6 7 9 11 13 and a smaller city would get 3 5 8 10 12 (6 and 7 are not adjacent---the FM radio band is in between). All other markets got whatever was left over, which was usually UHF.
We often took rifles and handguns to school - left them in our vehicles on school grounds with the rifle clearly in a gun rack.. the purpose - to go hunting after school.
Now your thrown out of school and charges brought up against you.
I remember the road runner running away from the coyote as he got blown up by an acme explosive device and we laughed and laughed.
I remember when the bad guys on tv where beat up and/or killed and the good guys were hailed as heroes..
I remembere when there was no such thing as a preservative and mom actually cooked.
I remember just scrounging for gas money to cruise all night... now you have to take out a small loan.
I remember when the bad guys on tv where beat up and/or killed and the good guys were hailed as heroes.. .
I remember when cops were good guys and criminals were bad guys---in real life AND on TV.
: I remember when there was no such thing as a preservative and mom actually cooked.
Yes there was: It was called a Mason Jar, and mom preserved what she grew in her own garden.
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