Joined: 13 Jan 2018 Age: 60 Gender: Male Posts: 2,140 Location: California
13 Jan 2018, 6:34 pm
Glad the topic of TV sign-offs was brought up.
My best guess is that the routines of TV sign-offs might be of interest regarding the Autism Spectrum; as TV sign-offs were relatively fixed rituals. TV sign-off times and channels were easily determined through the TV Guide schedules.
Most often, sign-offs pictured Air-Force jets flying in formation with a band playing 'The Star Spangled Banner' as audio; followed by the colored test patterns and the constant beeping audio.
A few times, I woke-up early enough to view TV sign-ons (a lot more mundane that the TV sign-offs).
I even once made a crayon drawing of a colored TV test pattern on medium thickness art paper about the size of.....a TV screen. I remember applying a ruler towards drawing the vertical color bars (and black, white, and gray vertical bars at the bottom third of the TV test pattern) in order to best reproduce an image of a test pattern.
I seem to remember tearing-up the drawing as "the novelty quickly wore-off" as I quickly felt that nothing beats seeing the original test pattern; that is a pattern only seen by viewers who (AHEM, occasionally myself) stayed awake late enough!
Joined: 25 Aug 2013 Age: 66 Gender: Male Posts: 34,239 Location: Long Island, New York
14 Jan 2018, 2:36 am
ASS-P wrote:
...I remember late night programming before it became so universal , I remember CBS-owned stations having " The Late Show " (old movies) , and even " The Late Late Show " and " Late Late Late Show " ! There was a recreation of TLS's title card + music on YouTube .
_________________ Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013 DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity
“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman
When I was browsing my Facebook feed quite a few years ago I saw that a nostalgia page I followed posted a picture of an old TV and inside the TV was a message that asked followers if they remembered hearing the national anthem before the channel/station closed down/signed off at midnight. At first I thought this was only an American thing (I'm British) but when I searched on YouTube for TV station/channel sign-offs/closedowns I found several from the BBC, particularly from the 1990s like the one I embedded in this message. It turned out that several countries had sign-offs/closedowns including Canada, Ireland and Australia. I then went through a phase of watching these sign-offs/closedowns, particularly from BBC One, and although I most likely never saw them as a child, I remember seeing the clock from the embedded video above during the daytime as well as the test card with a girl and a toy clown in front of a blackboard when there was a technical fault.
Warning: the long high pitched beep at the end of the video might be a sensory trigger to some.