TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1991 (WENH/Durham, NH)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MSTS1'
Length - 8:52

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.

This 1991 sign-off is from New Hampshire public TV station WENH, which was and is the flagship in the New Hampshire public television state network. It begins with the last couple of minutes of that night's episode of "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour", which was and is the flagship news program for PBS (now under the name PBS NewsHour). A program promo for "The American Experience" precedes a "Star Hustler" segment with Jack Horkheimer, which is followed by a promo for an airing of the classic Christmas film "It's a Wonderful Life". A voiceover promoting upcoming programming comes next, after which is an ownership/technical voiceover that, curiously, includes a slide with a graph of the different revenue sources that WENH relies on as a public TV station.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1988 (WYES/New Orleans)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Chris Hadley'
Length - 5:06

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.

For the second week in a row, "Sign-Offs Through the Years" brings you a public television sign-off--this time from New Orleans PBS station WYES and the year 1988. The sign-off sequence begins with a closing title slide from the movie showcase "Starlight Theatre", followed by an underwriting credit for Bookstar, a local bookstore. Next is a program promo for a musical program, "Echoes of the Big Bands with Merv Griffin", and after this is the ownership/technical voiceover, on miscellaneous images of WYES's facilities. This is followed by a piece with piano instrumental music and various nighttime images of New Orleans from the air. Closing out the sign-off is a national anthem film (with a cappella vocals), an element not always found in public TV sign-offs.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1987 (KTCA/Minneapolis-St. Paul)

Posted to YouTube by user 'mjanovec'
Length - 3:21

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.

Here is a 1987 sign-off (from Saturday, October 17, 1987, to be exact) from Minneapolis-St. Paul public TV station KTCA. (Several months ago, TFTP featured another sign-off from KTCA from just a few years after this one.) After the end of the end credits (and some underwriting announcements) from an episode of "Austin City Limits" is a long ownership/technical voiceover that includes images and title slides from quite a few then-current public TV programs produced by KTCA. This is followed by a credit scroll that lists the roster of KTCA station employees, then by color bars.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1982 (KCET/Los Angeles)

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'
Length - 2:22

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.

This 1982 sign-off from Los Angeles public TV station KCET has just two main parts: a minute-long promo for the Great Performances presentation of "Charterhouse of Parma", and a ownership/technical voiceover that is over a panoramic view of LA. (For reasons unknown, in the later part of the voiceover the camera pans and zooms in on the panorama.)

There's no national anthem film in this sign-off, as usual for most public television sign-offs that have been featured on TFTP (such as here, here, and here). The reasons for this, as for that mysterious zoom in this KCET sign-off, are unclear.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1971 (WLIW/Long Island, NY)

Posted to YouTube by user 'stevations'
Length - 0:35

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.

This first TFTP Friday sign-off of 2018 is also the launch of "Sign-Offs Through the Years", a special feature in which we will go year-by-year with each successive week, starting with today's sign-off from 1971.

There are not a lot of existing copies of full sign-offs from before the late-1970s, and so many of the early sign-offs we'll be posting are either re-creations using original audio or clips with a montage of still images using original audio. In an era before VCRs were widespread, it was relatively easy to record audio (using reel-to-reel or cassette recorders), but very difficult to record video.

This 1971 sign-off is a short one with very poor audio and a montage of still images, from station WLIW/Long Island, NY. WLIW had launched only a couple of years before this in 1969, serving (then, as now) as the public TV station for the Long Island region of New York state, including parts of the New York City metro area. The sign-off audio consists only of the ownership/technical voiceover.

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.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KTCA/St.Paul-Minneapolis (1990)

Posted to YouTube by user 'mjanovec'
Length - 2:07

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 1990 sign-off from Minneapolis-St. Paul public television station KTCA (now known as TPT, for Twin Cities Public Television) begins with the tail end of the end credits (and a post-credits underwriting slide) for an episode of the British sci-fi series "Blakes 7". This is followed by a credit roll for the station itself that lists all of the station personnel, accompanied by the ownership/technical voiceover. The sequence ends with a clever transformation of the station's multi-hued star logo into standard TV color bars.

TFTP On This Day: "Great Performances" (public TV) from WNET/New York (Nov. 28, 1986)

Posted to YouTube by user 'pannoni 9'
Length - 9:37

It Was 31 Years Ago Today: "Great Performances" is one of public television's most venerable programs (and there are a lot to choose from), having been on the air on PBS since 1972. Here is a set of clips from a "Great Performances" presentation of Gian Carlo Menotti's opera "Goya" from this day in 1986.

In addition to some mid-1980s "Great Performances" bumpers and logo graphics, we get to see a slew of underwriting announcements from the same era. An introductory segment from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., is hosted by actor Jose Ferrer, and an extended interpretive segment about Goya's artwork is presented by the director of the National Gallery of Art. Some program promos for WNET (the PBS member station for New York City) include "The Creative Edge", "Adam Smith's Money World", and "The Making of a Continent". "Goya" star Placido Domingo presents an offer for viewers to order the theatrical program for the opera. Finally, the "Goya" end credits are capped off by the opera's curtain call (and a couple of final underwriting credits).

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KLCS/Los Angeles (Jan. 8, 1978)

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...

Posted to YouTube by user 'MicroJow'

This week's sign-off segment is a 1978 sign-off from Los Angeles PBS member station KLCS. This was only about five years after KLCS's launch as a service of the Los Angeles Unified School District (the call letters stand for "L"os Angeles "C"ity "S"chools). As sign-offs go it's pretty no-frills (as many things are in the public television realm)--although the voiceover slide stating "Good Night, Good Night" has a nice seventies-style vibe to it. Also, there are good examples of both a 1970s-era public TV underwriting credit and the classic 1970s PBS logo.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from KCET/Los Angeles (Mar. 28, 1978)

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 'MicroJow'

This week we feature a public TV sign-off, from PBS station KCET in Los Angeles. This is a very short sequence (and may not be the complete sign-off sequence) that lacks any song or national anthem segment. Included are a late-1970s PBS network ID, a promo for Michael Jackson's public TV show (no, not that Michael Jackson, but the radio host and commentator) with guest Billy Barty, and the ownership/technical voiceover on a moving graphic of the KCET logo.

TFTP Signs-On for May: Station Sign-On (w/ "A.M. Weather") from WTTW (Chicago) (Oct. 18, 1983)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

Television from the past was not 24/7 like it is now, and stations usually signed-off for the night at around midnight or 1:00 am; this, of course, meant that they had to sign-on again the following morning each day.

This is a station sign-on for Tuesday, October 18, 1983, from Chicago PBS station WTTW, which starts with the color bars used by TV engineers to adjust the transmitted picture, followed by the customary voiceover info about the station's frequency and ownership (as required by FCC rules). This is followed by the day's segment of "A.M. Weather", a national round-up of weather information produced by Maryland Public TV with the support of several aviation-based organizations.

Station sign-ons usually took place around 5:00 or 5:30 am each morning (sometimes a little later), depending on when the station's first scheduled program for the day was. TFTP will feature one of these station sign-ons each month on the first of the month (or the first Monday if the 1st is on a weekend).

TFTP Flow: Public TV Pledge Breaks during "Summerfest '79" on WTTW (Chicago) (Aug. 25, 1979)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

Here at TFTP we work in public television, and we just finished the latest pledge drive, so here's a set of vintage public TV pledge breaks from 1979. These are from Chicago's WTTW Channel 11 and they feature as the on-air personalities Cherie Mason and Paul Brian. Compared to today's pledge breaks, which can often be a little staid and stuffy, Mason and Brian are refreshingly loose and improvisational in their banter and pitching. Other elements are likewise offbeat and clever, such as a brief filmed segment in the first pledge break (featuring a pre-fame and pre-"Cheers" Shelley Long).

One striking thing about the names of the programs above the ranks of phone volunteers in the background is how many of the shows are still on the air 35 years later. "Masterpiece Theatre", "NOVA", "Sesame Street"--these are public TV mainstays even today (and some of them, such as "Sesame Street", had already been on the air for a decade in 1979). Public television in the U.S. television system is a unique creature that remains dependent on viewers becoming members (or to use the terminology here, "subscribers") in order to survive. Here we see a relatively early example of the ways in which public television sought to acquire those memberships.