TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1981 (HBO)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:27

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

And throughout 2018, we are featuring "Sign-Offs Through the Years", as we go year-by-year with each successive week.

TFTP's Sign-Offs Through the Years has stuck mainly to broadcast stations that are major network affiliates. But this week we are featuring a cable network sign-off--from the era in which cable networks actually signed-off for the night. TFTP featured a 1979 sign-off for HBO a while back, and the 1981 sign-off here features the same exact "bedtime" film at the very end of it.

The animated "bedtime" film consists of images pertaining to things one would do before turning in for the night--setting an alarm clock, turning out lights, pulling window shades, and the like. The film is preceded by a series of promos for "HBO Weekend", including the movie "Alien" (on Friday), a concert program with country music star George Jones (on Saturday), and the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter" (on Sunday).

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Network Sign-Off from HBO (1979)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'
Length - 2:09

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...

This week instead of a local station sign-off (the most common type), here is a network sign-off for cable pay-TV network HBO from 1979. Of course, to us now, the idea of a network like HBO signing-off for the night (and really any kind of TV station) is completely bizarre. But in the early days of cable (in 1979, HBO had only been around for about four years as a national network), programming practices were still evolving.

HBO's sign-off sequence at this time did not consist of much. Here following a promo for a Martin Mull special, it consists only of an animated segment that shows different actions that people take as they turn in for the night--turning off lights, checking on sleeping children, setting alarm clock alarms, locking doors, brushing teeth. With no voiceover of any kind, just a nice relaxing musical score, it's a pretty chill and low-key way of ending a day's programming, culminating with a final logo graphic in which the "HBO" logo (an early version of the same logo the network uses to this day) goes dark letter by letter. Then the clip cuts to color bars for about the last thirty seconds.