When TV Ended
Listen up, kiddies. Back in my day...
I was searching through my catalog of clips I gathered during my busiest season of hunting through VHS and I stumbled upon a gem from WGN. I should mention, WGN holds a special place in my heart because I spent the very formative years of age 5-10 living in the suburbs of Chicago and WGN was an absolute staple of broadcast television.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of relatability for other people around the country because, much like Atlanta’s Ted Turner-owned TBS would become a cable mainstay and broadcast Braves baseball games across the country, WGN would also be a basic cable standard and broadcast Cubs games nationwide thereby making both “America’s Team” for people without a local team to cheer for.
But I digress.
The point of this post isn’t to sing the praises of WGN, despite their Chicagoland sainthood. No, it’s simply because this clip captures proof that I came from a different time and let’s me prove to my kids that I am built of heavier stuff because I was raised in an era when TV just…ended.
That’s right, kiddies! There was a time when not only could you not just stream anything your heart desired on demand. There was a time when there was literally NOTHING on.
Yep. Depending on the channel, viewers would be greeted with color bars (sometimes with a bonus piercing high-pitched tone) or just noisy black and white static.
Much like young people today recognize the save icon for computer programs, but may not recognize it depicts an actual floppy disc. Those color bars might be recognizable to a younger generation as having something to do with television, but they don’t have a true understanding.
Since I was a child during this era, it wasn’t that I often stayed up late to see the sign off, but there were many nights I fell asleep on the couch only to wake up to the colored bars instantly letting me know it was well past my bedtime.
On the flip side, if I happened to wake up early enough—I forget if it was at 5AM or 6AM—I could watch when the station’s signal returned and greeted the viewer with a welcome message or sign-on.
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember if this particular clip was one they played at midnight to mark the new day or if this clip comes from a return to broadcasting in the morning after the wee-hours of nothing. But it doesn’t matter. It made me remember at time before cable when there were literally only 4 channels, and if nothing was on, nothing was on.
I’m not necessarily waxing poetic about a simpler time. I enjoy the options available to me now. However, there is something to be said about a current life filled with constant distractions and how it might be nice to occasionally revisit a time when the only sound you hear is the static of nothing before going to sleep.
I too grew up without cable but in the Southeast we did not have any superstations like WGN, WTBS (aka TBS) or WPIX. We just had the basic 3 networks, then later FOX, a few indie stations, and the local PBS affiliate. That was it, 7 channels, maybe a few more if you had a really good antenna from Radio Shack, but those were usually just another network affiliate an hour away so it was the same stuff anyways. Some nights the signoff was as early as Midnight or 1230AM EST. Down here we would have the epic sign-offs with a montage of US Patriotism, and later it would be the Top Gun style planes.