In ye olde days, broadcast equipment was literally a mass of wires and tubes. The equipment ran hot and “technical difficulties” were literally an everyday occurrence. The overnight period gave the engineers a chance to do maintenance, adjust settings, and getting everything ready to start over the next morning.
(Those of you who are old enough might remember 1950s black and white sets where someone constantly had to adjust the horizontal and vertical hold, and there where a knob called “fine tuning” that - when you were lucky - could make the picture a little less fuzzy. Imagine doing that all day long with multiple cameras, monitors, etc. That’s where the test pattern came in. It gave the engineers a chance to compare the lines and details across the screen.)
By the 1970s there was more solid state equipment that could run longer with fewer adjustments, and some stations started to wonder if the insomniacs and third-shift workers were a sellable audience. But if it hadn’t been for program-length commercials, there probably would have been enough money in overnight programming to pay for one station in each market.
Oh yeah! Used to watch him all the time. Good memories.
I used to watch Wild Wild West on, I think, channel 11. It was hard to stay away until 12:30. I have memories of seeing episodes that never existed! (I’d dream my own episodes that probably were my interpretations of the sounds I was hearing from the show, which rarely matched!)
Really? I thought TJ was his real name. Oh well, learn something new every day!
Holy cow, I forgotten all about that. Around 1970 my parents gave me their old black-and-white TV, which was the size of a bank vault, but man was I excited to have it. And it had both those knobs, which it felt like frequently needed attention.
Occasionally, there were 2, 3 or 4 smaller knobs on the back panel for focus, sharpness (different than focus, but I don’t know why) and I forget the rest.
Growing up in Northern Virginia, I remember one station had The Million Dollar Movie at 3 am. It was generally some terrible sf or horror and I often asked my Dad to tape it.
After moving to suburban Pennsylvania in the early nineties, I was stunned to see that the repeating anouncements for the school channel was done on a Commodore 64.
I miss late night broadcast tv.
I miss broadcast Saturday morning cartoons more though.
Do you remember Sir Graves Ghastly, or Count Gore DeVol? They hosted TV creature features in the DC area. Baltimore had Ghost Host, whose castle had a storm door in the front.
I’d forgotten about Captain 20 – played by Dick Dyszel. You gotta love guys like that; as silly as the show might be, they always gave their all. Baltimore’s version was Stu Kerr. I swear that guy was in front of the camera for probably 70 years.
In San Diego the local stations were still signing off late at night (anywhere between midnight - 3 AM) well into the mid-'90s, and then started programming again around 6.
Back then, if you tuned into the Fox affiliate, which was broadcast out of Mexico, they’d start and end the day with the Mexican national anthem instead of the Star-Spangled Banner. The NBC affiliate had its own orchestral theme song that they’d play at sign-off, which concluded with the three-note NBC chime.
I remember that! Along about 1976 I bought my OWN tv =) I had the dubious pleasure of having craptastic lungs, so I ended up every year with bronchitis and half the time it rolled into pneumonia and the ancient early 1960s 12 inch diagonal tv really was on its last cathode tube. I absolutely detest game shows and soap operas though I liked the talk shows.
Later, in 1980 I hosed my back up and was in a body cast, stuck in a room that a little old lady had gotten there first so SHE rented the TV so I had no access to it. She watched soap operas and game shows [HER little shows as she called them] until about 5 pm, when her cadre of little old lady friends showed up for the next 4 hours. I couldn’t listen to the radio during the day because then she couldn’t hear her little shows, I couldn’t listen to the radio after her friends showed up because it would interfere with their visit … I finally exploded at the nurse and doctor and told them to get me the hell out of that room and into one where I could at least listen to the radio in peace … which they did =) Though I did actually watch tv in the evenings when they had decent stuff on.
Does anybody remember a wacky TV preacher named Gene Scott? I can remember coming home at 0200 after the bars closed in Rochester and kicking back with the TV on, and seeing this sort of rangy, scroungy guy with a cowboy hat and boots. He stomped into camera view and sat down at a desk, and one memorable time said “Friends, I need $10 000, and the lord said you all will provide.” then he sang a hymn, showed pictures of his horses, sang a hymn. Then he said “I know I have thousands of viewers in my flock, and if all of you send in just one dollar, I will get that 10 000 I need” then off to random singing, and he was able to wave this huge bible around like it was bolted to his hand. I always wondered if he managed ot get that 10K =)
Gene also blasted his way onto the shortwave radio bands, a real fixture on the aether. There hasn’t been much activity on the shortwave bands in recent decades, but Gene was a notable exception. He was entertaining, I guess. I would not be surprised at all if he (the recorded tapes) is still out there exhorting his listeners. I think his daughter is running the show now.
At the height of his career, his ministry earned more than $1 million a month in tax-free donations, enabling him to live a billionaire baller-worthy lifestyle and build a property empire that included two horse ranches in Kentucky, plus a $15 million compound in the exclusive Bradbury Estates guard-gated community, and the Pasadena mansion.
