'80's cable tv touch-tone speed dial sound

Pretty much up there in the title. HBO and Showtime used it a lot between things. I’m watching RTV right now, and they use a similar sound during breaks. What was it?

I think it might be in-band signaling.

Search “non television” on the link below. It’s used to signal when to start the show.

In-band signaling

See also DTMF tones

DTMF Wiki

Wow. That’s it.

I hope RTV is just using 'em for nostalgia value.

Oops, looks like Baltar is going to meet the council!

Bee-doops.

Nickelodeon used them a lot in the You Can’t Do That on Television era.

I enocountered them on a lot of Disney home videos, myself.

In the late 70’s, early 80’s, broadcasters were changing to automated system to switch between muliple tape cartridge machines. The tone sequences were manually inserted onto the audio track to trigger certain actions. For instance, insert a tape, hit Play, and it would cue to the beginning of the movie/commercial and stop, to be triggered later by another signal from a different tape.

There is no nostalgia about it. Just that they’ve been left on the audio tracks and nobody has bothered to edit thousands of tapes to get rid of a fairly innocuous momentary audio burp.

Pretty sure it is nostalgia on RTV’s part, seeing as they weren’t around in the 70’s-80’s and thus have no old tapes of their station identification to reuse. These sounds aren’t during the shows or vintage ads or anything just their own branding. “RTV BLEEPBLEEP BLOOP BLEEPBLORP