{"id":39768,"date":"2013-11-15T12:20:40","date_gmt":"2013-11-15T18:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39768"},"modified":"2013-12-01T18:51:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T00:51:42","slug":"sign-off-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=39768","title":{"rendered":"Sign-Off Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long, long time since TV stations &#8220;signed off&#8221;, at least in major metro areas. TV&#8217;s been a 24\/7 business ever since cable became a dominant part of the media world.<\/p>\n<p>But when I was a kid, the sign for &#8220;now it&#8217;s time to be tired&#8221; came when Channel 4 in Fargo would reach the end of its broadcast day &#8211; it may have been around midnight, if I remember correctly &#8211; and the orchestra would get rolling, and this piece of film would start:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/EzQYd_INSOg\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>And then, for the next minute or two&#8230;:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/www.mediacollege.com\/video\/test-patterns\/television\/indianhead640x480.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"384\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And then? Lulled by Leo Mann&#8217;s voice-over and the silent test pattern, you&#8217;d be jarred back to reality by REALLY LOUD STATIC as the carrier signal went silent, turning the frequency over to a universe full of random electromagnetism.<\/p>\n<p>It always felt and sounded jarring; to go from the orderly humdrum of late-night small market TV to the transcendent ethereality of &#8220;High Flight&#8221;, to silence &#8211; and then, cacaphony.\u00a0 It was unsettling &#8211; that feeling of going from &#8220;something&#8221; to &#8220;nothing&#8221;, of going from watching a coherent signal from Fargo to random, formless signals that&#8217;d skittering about the universe for billions of years, ending up as &#8220;snow&#8221; on a cathode ray tube.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I usually wished I&#8217;d fallen asleep earlier &#8211; and eventually learned to hit the power knob before the &#8220;Indian&#8221; was done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a long, long time since TV stations &#8220;signed off&#8221;, at least in major metro areas. TV&#8217;s been a 24\/7 business ever since cable became a dominant part of the media world. But when I was a kid, the sign for &#8220;now it&#8217;s time to be tired&#8221; came when Channel 4 in Fargo would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39768"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40303,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39768\/revisions\/40303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}