TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1975 (KTBS/Shreveport, LA)

Posted to YouTube by user 'spufferama321'
Length - 5:05

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 so far had to feature sign-offs that had original audio but still images as visuals--because only the audio has survived.

This week we have our first actual, full sign-off, from 1975 and Shreveport, Louisiana, station KTBS. TFTP actually featured this sign-off once before, and it is somewhat unique in that it uses not the national anthem but instead a rendition of "Dixie". This song of the south is heard over various images of the Lousiana bayou at sunset (or is it sunrise?), and these images continue to the end of the sign-off sequence as the ownership/technical voiceover is heard.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KTBS/Shreveport, LA (1975)

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

Posted to YouTube by user 'Spufferama321'

From KTBS-TV, an ABC affiliate in Shreveport, Louisiana, this station sign-off includes a couple of elements not always seen in sign-offs: First, there is a National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Television Code seal, which simply meant that the station subscribed (as almost all stations did) to the NAB code, which was a common-sense list of practices for broadcasting. Many, if not most, stations included this seal in their sign-off segment, although it's not always included in the sign-off clips that surface on YouTube.

Secondly, and more rare, is the use here of "Dixieland" rather than "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the sign-off song. Stations would sometimes include in a sign-off segment a second song in addition to the national anthem, but rarely in place of it. (I don't believe that there was any requirement by stations to use "The Star-Spangled Banner" when signing off.) Having the voiceover technical and ownership information over the end part of the sign-off film, as done here, is also less common; usually it was done over a slide of some kind (often the station's call letters).