TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1989 (KOMO/Seattle)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 4:15

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.

Our 1989 sign-off is from Seattle station KOMO. It begins with a brief religious segment called "A Note of Faith", which unlike most such segments is merely a slide with voiceover. This is followed by a station editorial about children's TV viewing habits. Next comes the ownership/technical voiceover on a still of the KOMO-TV logo (they were them, to paraphrase KOMO's slogan). As a border station with a sizable Canadian audience (and similarly to other stations in the same circumstances), KOMO played "O Canada" (the Canadian national anthem) in addition to "The Star-Spangled Banner", and those two songs close out the sign-off sequence.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1979 (WDIV/Detroit)

Posted to YouTube by user 'Retrontario'
Length - 7:10

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 1979 sign-off from Detroit station WDIV begins with the tail end of a segment (presumably public service in nature) called "Classroom". The NAB Television Code slide leads into PSAs for Tel-Law (a public service in Detroit for getting legal advice over the telephone) and the Detroit Institute of Arts, which are followed by a local promo for "First 4 Sports", the station's sports department. 

Next is an Editorial Reply in which the president of the Michigan Beer & Wine Wholesalers Association responds to a recent station editorial about a new bottle deposit proposal. (Fans of "Seinfeld" will now flashback to the episode centering on the Michigan bottle deposit scam.) Editorial replies like this were often seen on TV in this era, and one wonders if this one ever saw the light of day at any time other than right before sign-off.

The ownership/technical voiceover on a curious criss-cross weave "Goodnight" image precedes more PSAs, for the Michigan Heart Association and the Detroit Community Music School. Rabbi Dannel Schwartz then presents a religious segment. The very disco-looking "go 4 it" WDIV logo (with serious neon) appears for a final voiceover "good night" and the intro to the national anthem. The anthem film itself is a quick-cut montage of mostly still images, many of them very "seventies" in nature. The disco-logo returns for a few seconds before the signal cuts out.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1978 (KXAS/Ft. Worth-Dallas)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 3:31

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 sign-off from station KXAS in Ft. Worth-Dallas, Texas, from 1978, starts in the middle of a religious segment called "Day to Day" in which a woman is singing a hymn while a pianist accompanies her. It then shifts to the national anthem, but without any kind of film--the music simply plays over a slide of the KXAS logo. (This qualifies as the least elaborate and most bare-bones national anthem presentation we've seen here at TFTP.)

The KXAS logo is a spiffy number "5" with a star incorporated into the curve of the number (presumably an implied reference to Texas' motto as the "Lone Star state"), and with a smaller version of the late-1970s NBC "N" logo perched next to it. The logo stays on screen for the next portion of the sign-off, which is the ownership/technical voiceover. A brief on-screen message about the station's microwave transmitter link closes the sign-off.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Sign-Offs Through the Years - 1977 (WLS/Chicago)

Posted to YouTube by user 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'
Length - 7:50

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.

As we march into the late-1970s with "Sign-Offs Through the Years", here is a content-packed (and lengthy) sign-off from March 6, 1977, and station WLS in Chicago. It begins with the last few seconds and end credits of the 1961 movie "The Guns of Navarone" starring Gregory Peck. (Watch closely and see at least a couple instances of obvious pan-and-scan of this widescreen film.) This is followed by a couple of promos for upcoming movie broadcasts of "The Gambler" (1974) and "Bless the Beasts and Children" (1971).

A "Note of Interest" slide with voiceover of where to send public service announcements for the station, a long PSA for AARP featuring the late-in-life accomplishments of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright and Grandma Moses, and a station ID with a voiceover PSA for the United Negro College Fund precede a "Reflections" segment with a bible verse reading by Rev. John Ware--who emphasizes the concept of "Keep On Keepin' On" (remember, it was the seventies).

Finally, the national anthem film--with images of portraits of Founding Fathers--is played, preceded by a NAB Seal of Good Practice slide and followed by color bars.

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week--and Signs on for December! Station Sign-Off and Sign-On from WCBS/New York (1977)

Posted to YouTube by user 'SignOffsGuy'
Length - 8:53

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...

AND

TFTP marks the beginning of each new month with a classic station sign-on sequence to "sign-on" for the month....

This special post--coming on a 1st of the month that is also a Friday--features a unique clip that includes BOTH a sign-off sequence and a sign-on sequence. Apparently (according to the notes for this clip on its YouTube page), WCBS (the flagship affiliate for CBS) at this time signed off each morning at 5:00 am for just one hour before signing back on shortly after 6:00 am. The clip above contains both the sign-off sequence as well as the start of the subsequent sign-on sequence for the era circa 1977.

The sign-off sequence begins (after a brief closing bumper for "The Late Late Show") with a public service announcement for the Jewish Chautauqua Society consisting of poetic voiceover on images of children's drawings and footage of abandoned concentration camps. This is followed by a religious segment called "Give Us This Day" featuring a Jewish rabbi delivering an inspirational message. Next is the ownership/technical voiceover (with some slide mix-ups involving the NAB code slide), with the national anthem film (a rather prosaic one featuring images of flags and national monuments in Washington, D.C.) closing out the sign-off.

Then the sign-on sequence starts. A WCBS test pattern kicks it off, followed by a ownership and technical voiceover that starts by greeting us with "Good Morning".

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from WAFF/Huntsville-Decatur, AL (1979)

Posted to YouTube by user 'robatsea2009'
Length - 4:52

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 sign-off from 1979 for northern Alabama station WAFF begins with a few NBC program promos: for an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" (NBC hadn't started to use the "very special episode" trope yet, but if they had, this one would've qualified), for the prime-time special for the 17th anniversary of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", and for NFL Football on NBC Sports.

A locally-branded bumper for "News 48" sports leads into a short religious segment called "A Seed for the Sower" coming from somewhere called the "Guido Evangelistic Association" in Georgia. The ownership/technical voiceover follows, on images from a TV master control room (WAFF's, presumably). The national anthem film closes out the sequence, with a rather spare piano rendition over stock images of monuments, military transports, and natural wilderness ("Courtesy of the Army National Guard").

TFTP Signs-Off for the Week: Station Sign-Off from WLW/Chicago (Aug. 7, 1979)

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 'The Museum of Classic Chicago Television'

From Chicago ABC affiliate WLS comes this late-1970s station sign-off with a couple of elements that were not uncommon but also not universal in sign-off sequences. First is an FBI most-wanted bulletin, of the kind that still occasionally appears on local affiliates today, as a sort of public service element in the sign-off sequence. The other element, which was found in many sign-off (and also sign-on) sequences, is a religious thought-of-the-day type piece; stations including such segments sometimes created their own using local clergy and sometimes utilized syndicated national segments. WLS's is a locally-made one called "Reflections". These are followed by--and the sign-off sequence concluded with--the "Star-Spangled Banner".