Christmas at TFTP (Sign-Off and On This Day Editions): Station Sign-Off from WGBH/Boston (Dec. 15, 1987)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Lincoln P'
Length - 5:06

Each Friday afternoon, TFTP signs-off for the week with a classic station sign-off segment for your enjoyment and to bid farewell until Monday...

It Was 30 Years Ago Today: This public television sign-off from Boston station WGBH--from thirty years ago today--begins with an ID that is an adorable animation of Santa and his reindeers kicking it in a Rockettes-style danceline. Then we see a young Tom Bergeron, later of "America's Funniest Home Videos" and "Dancing with the Stars" hosting fame, making an appeal for pledges of support to the station. This is followed by several program promos, including for "Christmas at Pops", "The Kirov Ballet: Swan Lake", a broadcast of the film "It's a Wonderful Life", and "A Child's Christmas in Wales".

Next is the ownership/technical voiceover on a long series of images, starting with black-and-white behind-the-scenes images of the control rooms, studios, etc. at WGBH, before segueing to color images from some of the programs broadcast by the station. (This second group includes one image from "Zoom", a TFTP favorite.) The sequence ends with another ownership/technical voiceover on a film clip of a slow pan (possibly a time-lapse) across the Boston skyline that gradually goes from lightness to darkness, before the WGBH "2" logo diminishes in size to a pinpoint of light that then goes dark.